James Kynge

In China, it's the Chinese government that calls the shots.

And that's why, as you mentioned at the top, Alice, Apple had to bring down the commission it earns on the Apple App Store for Chinese users, as I mentioned.

Apple is not the only company that derives a huge proportion of its total global revenues from China.

In the US, there are other companies in the same bracket.

Qualcomm, the semiconductor maker, is one.

Texas Instruments is another.

Tesla, which of course makes cars, and also energy generation and storage technology.

Micron, Corvo, Broadcom, all chip makers from the US are in the same bracket, just to name a few.

From Europe, ASML, the huge Dutch semiconductor equipment manufacturer.

The car makers from Germany, VW and BMW.

The big German industrial companies like BASF and Siemens, the Swiss luxury company Richemont, Rio Tinto, the mining company, all of these companies derive a very large proportion of their global revenues from China.

And therefore, when the Chinese government says something or issues an order or an instruction to these companies, they would be very rash to refuse that instruction point blank.

And I think this is a crucial aspect of the whole commercial and geopolitical dynamic that the Western companies get into when they start investing so much in China.

But let's just return to the question of Apple.

What happened in order was that earlier this month, the People's Daily, which of course is the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, criticized Apple for its monopolistic behavior.

This came just days after Apple said it would drop its typical commission on the mainland app store purchases from 30% to 25%.

This was a big concession by Apple because it drops the app store commission to below what it is for US users.

But it wasn't enough for China.

The People's Daily editorial said that Chinese users and developers still face many restrictions that Beijing believes are anti-competitive.

And we'll have to see what Apple does in the future.