Patrick McGee

So the impact Apple's had has been enormous.

Nobody knew about it.

And it was Apple's job to basically market their own impact on the country to Xi Jinping and to the top echelon of Chinese leaders.

Let's just go right to the top.

Tim Cook has said silence is the ultimate consent.

find me an issue in China where he's been vocal.

I don't know of any, you know.

Someone like Jimmy Lai, an outspoken advocate of democracy in Hong Kong, was sentenced to 20 years.

Apple had nothing to say.

Steve Jobs is actually Jimmy Lai's hero.

I mean, Jimmy Lai is a guy who has companies called

Apple Daily, he has another media organization called Next.

I mean, these are named after Steve Jobs' organizations.

You know, I used to live in Hong Kong, and in 2019, Hong Kong had these protests.

You could say for democracy, you could just say for a sort of one country democracy.

two systems approach where Hong Kong wanted to retain some of its autonomy.

And the way that Hong Kong protesters were communicating was using AirDrop, the sort of encrypted service on the iPhone.

Well, Beijing basically asked Apple to get rid of AirDrop and Apple complied.

I mean, this was compared, I think it was Mark Warner, Democratic senator, who said Apple is doing the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party.

You know, there's a bipartisan view within Congress that Apple has basically been asked to jump by the Communist Party.