Apple's Hotel California trap: It can check out but not leave

The iPhone maker may shift its factories but can't really quit China

- Catherine Thorbecke

During US President Donald Trump's first term, he famously toured a Texas factory and claimed credit for bringing Apple production back to America. Except the plant had been running long before he took office. And it was an 'unmitigated fiasco.' Workers in China had to be flown in to help fix the mounting manufacturing problems encountered in the US heartland.

This telling anecdote from Apple in China, a gripping read by former Financial Times journalist Patrick McGee, shows how the tech giant became beholden to America's biggest geopolitical adversary. Up until this point, the book recounts how Apple flew engineers from California to China to train and collaborate with local workers to manufacture its most iconic products.

Now, it seems, the tables have irreversibly turned.

McGee argues that the technology transfer facilitated by Apple to China, via small decisions compounding over decades, ultimately made it the biggest corporate investor in 'Made in China 2025,' President Xi Jinping's bold plan to end reliance on Western technology. "Here was America's most famous tech giant volunteering to play the role of Prometheus, handing the Chinese the gift of fire," McGee writes.