BY JOHN FENG ON 3/28/23 AT 6:44 AM EDT
Apple CEO Tim Cook, left, poses for a selfie with Chinese singer Isabelle Huang during an Apple store meet-and-greet on March 24, 2023, in Beijing, China.TIM COOK/WEIBO
Officials in Beijing
this week seized on a headlining visit to China by
Apple's Tim Cook and other Fortune 500 CEOs to juxtapose
their warm welcome with the mounting pressure faced by TikTok in the United
States.
Cook and other Western business leaders
attended the government-sponsored China Development Forum, which concluded on
March 27 with talks led by senior members of the Chinese cabinet. Cook's first
attendance at the event since the pandemic was further proof of China's ongoing
dominance as a manufacturer of top-end consumer electronics.
The Apple executive
had announced his arrival in the Chinese capital on Friday with a smiling
selfie posted to China's main social media website Weibo, less than 12 hours
after Shou Zi Chew, the CEO of TikTok, was grilled by
American lawmakers in a lengthy congressional hearing about the cybersecurity
risks posed by the short-video app.
Chinese officials and state media outlets
picked up on the contrasting big tech moments after memes comparing the two
strikingly different welcomes flooded the Chinese internet.
"Which country is more open toward foreign businesses?" Hua Chunying, China's assistant foreign minister, tweeted on Monday alongside images of Chew sitting before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and Cook shaking hands with customers at an Apple store in Beijing.
Which country is more open toward foreign businesses? pic.twitter.com/EnqJVmx87m
— Hua Chunying 华春莹 (@SpokespersonCHN) March 27, 2023
Hua ironically labeled America as an "open market" and
China as a "hostile market" in what has become Beijing's new through
line to attack U.S. policies it argues are harmful to Chinese business,
rebuffing Washington's national security concerns.
Meanwhile, U.S. social media
services including Meta and Twitter have
been banned in China for over a decade. Chinese users don't have access to
TikTok either—they're offered ByteDance's highly regulated sister app Douyin
instead.
It
may be an unwelcome development for Apple, which would've wanted Cook's trip to
have been dispatched from political rhetoric emerging in Washington or Beijing,
given the company's continued reliance on China's manufacturing base for
its leading products, including nearly all iPhone, iPad and Mac models.
In a keynote address at the
business forum on Saturday, Cook praised Apple's 30-year relationship with
China as "symbiotic." This dependence is likely to continue: It could
take Apple eight
years to move just 10 percent of its production capacity outside of China,
according to a Bloomberg Intelligence estimate last year.
The Cupertino tech giant was otherwise smart to avoid overt
political symbolism. After he spoke at the government-backed event, Cook
skipped a photo op with Qin Gang, the Chinese foreign minister, who posed with
other executives.
On Monday, Cook was among the speakers at a large business
meeting led by China's Premier Li Qiang, a gathering also attended by Qin,
according to footage aired by CCTV. The Apple CEO met Chinese Commerce Minister
Wang Wentao on the same day.
Apple didn't return an email seeking comment about Hua's Twitter
meme before publication.
At Odds Over
TikTok
TikTok already
faced insurmountable odds before Chew's five-hour testimony on Thursday in
front of the bipartisan House panel to allay fears that Beijing could
manipulate the app through ByteDance, its Chinese-owned parent company.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill
have two major concerns:
TikTok's collection of U.S. user data and fundamental control of its
proprietary algorithm, which decides what users see on their screen.
The company says it has
already spent $1.5 billion on mitigation efforts to address the first issue by
onshoring data storage as part of something known as Project Texas. It has struggled to convince policymakers
about the second point.
TikTok's insistence
that its operations are wholly independent from the Chinese government weren't
helped when, just hours before Chew's hearing, a spokesperson from China's
commerce ministry said Beijing would "firmly oppose" a U.S. order for
ByteDance to sell its stake in the app.
China's public backing of TikTok, the
country's most successful tech export to date, continued this week. Chinese
foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning on Monday said the U.S. had "no
evidence or proof" that the app posed a national security threat.
"The U.S. should respect the principles
of market economy and fair competition, stop suppressing foreign companies and
provide an open, fair, just and non-discriminatory environment for foreign
companies investing and operating in the U.S.," she said.
Reps. Mike Gallagher
of Wisconsin and Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, the Republican
chair and Democratic ranking member of the House selection committee on China, were among those not
convinced by Chew's testimony, they told ABC News' This Week on Monday.
"I think this has
actually increased the likelihood that Congress will
take some action," said Gallagher of the probability that TikTok will be
restricted or forced into divestiture.
"The key part
that is missing from Project Texas' mitigation strategy is control of the
algorithm. That's really what we need to address," he continued.
"They've actually united Republicans and Democrats out
of a concern of allowing the CCP to control the most dominant media platform in
America," he said, referring to China's long-ruling Communist Party.
Chew told lawmakers
that 150 million Americans risked losing access to one of their favorite apps.
Observers have suggested a ban could impact voters in 2024.
"While TikTok is another general social
media app, and we have a generalized concern about these social media apps,
it's different in kind from any other social media app because its parent
company is beholden to the Chinese Communist Party," Krishnamoorthi said.
"That is why, on bipartisan basis, we've banned TikTok from all federal
devices."
https://www.newsweek.com/china-us-apple-tim-cook-tiktok-shou-zi-chew-1790730
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