Apple warns suppliers to follow China rules on 'Taiwan' labeling

I have a friend working for a company whose biggest clients are in the Emirates. One of said client is the government, and it is asking them to buy some very specific equipment, knowing fully well this equipment is only sold in Israel.<p>However, the Emirates cannot trade with Israel, and refuse to pay for any equipment labelled as coming from this country. Calling one of the officials, they asked for a solution. They told them to ship everything first to the UK. There, they should unpack every single object, and package them again with different country labels. Once the box has passed custom, nobody will raise the topic about the equipment origin.<p>And so this is what they do.

Trade is really a matter for the government, and the US (sadly) adheres to the One China Policy. This just reflects the official policy, and having the companies pick this fight instead of the country is hypocritical.

People seem to be overinflating the hell out of this.<p>&gt; Apple has asked suppliers to ensure that shipments from Taiwan to China strictly comply with Chinese customs regulations<p>Duh! it&#x27;s to China! You&#x27;re just going to piss off your contract manufacturers who have government officials overlooking their supply.

It will be painful. It will cause huge economic disruption. There will be a fall in living standards and severe inflation.<p>But, it&#x27;s time for US companies to pull out of China. The moral imperative to help China rise out of poverty through trade is done. They are no longer a poor country. Now we are compromising our values for something stupid ... for cheaper iPhones.<p>Long term our Grandchildren will all be under the boots of the CPC if we don&#x27;t take the pain now.<p>I&#x27;m not suggesting we war with China. I&#x27;m suggesting we remove their leverage from our economies. As long as EU and America need Chinese goods to subsidize their massively irresponsible fiscal policies, Chinese dictators will have leverage over Western people.<p>You have to sacrifice material well-being for freedom at the right time, or you will have neither in a generation.

I wonder what Apple would now list if updating their FY20 supplier list[1] which simply states &quot;Taiwan&quot; for manufacturing locations for many of their suppliers.<p>Some of the suppliers in the list[1] operate manufacturing facilities in both mainland China and Taiwan, and their websites refer to a combination of &quot;China&quot;, &quot;Taiwan&quot; and &quot;R.O.C.&quot;. I do wonder how difficult it would be for these companies to deal with both governments at the same time! For example, the visa policies of each government towards each other appear to be very restrictive[2][3].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.apple.com&#x2F;supplier-responsibility&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;Apple-Supplier-List.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.apple.com&#x2F;supplier-responsibility&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;Apple-Supp...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Visa_policy_of_Taiwan#Chinese_travelers_domiciled_in_Mainland_China" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Visa_policy_of_Taiwan#Chinese_...</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Visa_policy_of_mainland_China#Taiwan" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Visa_policy_of_mainland_China#...</a>

Seems like they&#x27;re just following local import&#x2F;trade rules? I think the rule is bad but presumably plenty of local trade rules are stupid. One doesn&#x27;t get to pick and choose which to follow.<p>I guess the implication is that going along with China&#x27;s stance on Taiwan is &quot;going to far&quot; ethically and Apple should refuse, but I can&#x27;t quite see this.

Why is this interesting? Taiwan has to compete in the Olympics as Chinese Taipei or whatever. Yeah, any place that China can influence, it makes Taiwan call itself China.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.ph&#x2F;mZaR9" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.ph&#x2F;mZaR9</a>

i recently got an electronic product that said 中國 instead of 中国 on the label (traditional vs simplified characters). i wonder if this was meant as a subtle indication that it was from traditional-character land.

I HATE the fact technology has to be influenced so much by politics. The only reason we are not travel the stars by now is our own fault.

What’s wrong with the original title? The re-written title here makes no grammatical sense and misrepresents the story.

Why not put &quot;US&quot; on the shipments instead, as it&#x27;s closer to the truth?

They should make their chips at CSMC instead of TSMC then.

It looks to me that this is only shipments from Taiwan to China<p>&gt; Apple has asked suppliers to ensure that shipments from Taiwan to China strictly comply with Chinese customs regulations after a recent visit by senior U.S. lawmaker Nancy Pelosi to Taipei stoked fears of rising trade barriers.<p>Am I missing something? I do not see a requirement that all package from Taiwan say they are from China.

Doesn&#x27;t surprise me. Money talks louder than sovereignty of some state. :(

Taiwan one day has to be strong enough just continue to label Taiwan. Tbh if labelled as china does it subject to china embargo, tax, …

But i thought 1 china :). Seriously was this an issue, of people mismarking components?

This is unsurprising. The reality is that the US, China and even much of Taiwan actually or effectively supports the One CHina policy.<p>It would be suicide for China to invade Taiwan. The economic damage this would do to China is immense. China may well collapse. Aside from that, it&#x27;s not that easy either. China may well have a much larger military but a sea crossing is no easy feat.<p>Look at Britain. It hasn&#x27;t been successfully invaded by sea in almost 1000 years (1066 being th elast time). On a clear day you can see the white cliffs of Dover from Calais (~17 miles across the English Channel) yet the might of Nazi Germany could never cross it.<p>Even though the US has legislation to protect Taiwan, if push came to shove, the US simply wouldn&#x27;t trigger a direct war between nuclear powers in the sam eway that the US isn&#x27;t getting directly involved in Ukraine.<p>And much of Taiwan is happy with the situation as is. Pushing independence is going to seriously rock the boat.<p>So everyone is happy with the situation of China having an official policy that Taiwan is part of China without anything actually changing <i>including China</i>.<p>I&#x27;m personally not a fan of Western companies being influenced by the CCP dangling the carrot of access to the Chinese market when it&#x27;s a mirage. China will <i>never</i> allow a Western company to dominate the Chinese market. Yet we have Hollywood, for example, kowtowing to China.<p>China really took an L (IMHO) over the Pelosi visit. She&#x27;s not the first House Speaker to visit (Newt Ginrich being the last ~25 years ago). By taking a public position, China really gave the US no choice but to proceed rather than back down. It&#x27;s just mishandled all the way.<p>So we&#x27;ll have symbolic things like &quot;Made in --Taiwan--China&quot; as retaliation.

This is ridiculous. Taiwan is a free and independent country. Shame on Apple.

Obviously the tariffs on the goods Apple imports from China and from &quot;China&quot; aren&#x27;t high enough.

Fiduciary responsibility over moral responsibility is what killed America

Officially, Taiwan agree to the “One China” stance. They even agree in the 1992 consensus that RoC and PRC does not agree who is the legitimate government of both mainland China and Taiwan islands, but the One China stance itself is not something in dispute.<p>The constitution of Taiwan claims sovereignty over mainland China, although they added an amendment to differentiate “free area” citizens (Taiwanese) and citizens under control of the “rebellions” (I don’t know if they removed the specific wording yet).<p>You could argue that Taiwan have to agree to One China by force, as the PRC has made it very clear that the PLA (People’s liberation Army) is invading if Taiwan abandon the stance.<p>With that in mind, Taiwan and China situation is really similar to a civil war, Taiwan is just a secessionist. And until the situation is resolved, there is nothing wrong with label it “Taiwan, China”

This should honestly be picked up by a larger news organization. If the US is serious about protecting Taiwan and bringing more chips to the US, Apple should be shamed for choosing Chinese profits. Imagine if Apple told Ukraine employees to label Russia on their badges.

This company pretends it has the moral high ground, but like most of corporate America, they always have an eye on Chinese profits. America&#x27;s future is at stake and we won&#x27;t wake up until it&#x27;s too late.

I&#x27;m done with Apple.

This all is highlighting the dangers to public companies about political positions potentially destabilizing the business. Part of the responsibility of C level execs is to shield the shareholders from such uncertainty. AAPL should not be dependent on any single region for product and the political climate &amp; COVID restrictions are prime examples why businesses now need to dramatically shift their supply chain dependencies to dilute the risk.

You cannot offend China if your company is a China-based manufacturing company. Tim Cook didn&#x27;t make sure Apple was am America-base manufacturing company and spent a lot of Apple&#x27;s money on China. Thinking that Tim Cook will not march to Xi Jinping&#x27;s drum is absurd. His criticisms of American manufacturing can all be solved by Apple investing the same money.<p>This should be a bigger story. He should be seen as someone who spent American money to build China&#x27;s supply chain.<p>[edit: gotta love the Tim Cook apologists]