Patrick McGee

And I think it takes them several years to really get to grips with what it means to be operating in China.

It is a wild idea.

And I have to say, manufacturing is the thing that Xi Jinping cares most about.

That is the way that China creates its power and that creates choke points in the world economy where other nations are dependent on China.

And the electronics industry in particular is the most important industry.

Inherently, almost everything in electronics has a dual use, meaning that it's helpful for consumers.

It's also helpful for the military.

You think of what a drone is.

It's a smartphone with propellers.

You think of what an EV is, right?

A very important industry for China.

It's a smartphone on wheels.

If you can understand to do the logistics of high volume production of iPhones, you absolutely can transfer that technology to building anything involving chips, cameras, GPS, etc., which, of course, means military technology.

Apple just played an instrumental role in what Xi Jinping calls Made in China 2025.

This was a program from 11 or 12 years ago, which is in a sense to sever China's dependence on the West, to sort of be a vertically integrated country that could do all of the things necessary for 21st century technologies on its own.

And Apple basically realizes around 2015, not only that they could help China in that

way that they already were doing so.

They just hadn't sort of put it in that language.

But the result of this is that Apple, as I said, had no vice presidents in the country around 2013.

Within a few years, they have several.