Apple and China

China till 1999 did not produce any Apple product but by 2009 it produced all its items gaining immensely from Apple transferring intricate technology, as momentous, according to McGee, as the fall of the Berlin Wall. Apple's investment, excluding many of the components of its hardware in China, reached $55 billion by 2015. Its investment in China is more than Marshall Plan's entire aid by the US to Western Europe after World War II.

- BY SUBRATA MUKHERJEE AND SUSHILA RAMASWAMY

Deng Xiaoping's "Opening Up" reforms in 1978 enabled China to develop export-oriented Dreforms in manufacturing hubs, establish Special Economic Zones (SEZS) in coastal areas for foreign investment, capitalise on its abundant low-cost labour, and strategically build world class infrastructure. Deng was convinced of the need to abandon the equalitarian impulse of socialism and embrace fresh experimentation to usher in prosperity. The effect was immediate. Foreign investment poured. Huge manpower within China migrated from rural to urban areas allowing for smooth transfer of workers to fill up its factories, made possible by its unprecedented attempt to simultaneously realise agricultural and industrial revolutions.

It was partially modelled after Hong Kong where such an experiment was tremendously successful as it combined three factors, low wages but efficient management, infrastructure and acceptance of the market which were denied by socialism. The immediate result was unprecedented not only in China but for the entire world. A nation of more than a billion opened and modernised at a spectacular speed. For the coming three decades, China maintained a growth rate of 10 per cent and lifted 800 million people out of abject poverty. After joining the WTO in 2001, China accelerated its integration into the global supply chain, creating a vast, well organised, resourceful, and competent environment, devising supportive policies by way of subsidies, faster approvals, lax regulations, and giving tax breaks to attract global companies.