APPLE HELPING TO REPRESS CHINA'S CITIZENS

Second, why co-operate with a repressive regime? Apple had the standard answer with which the Desmarais family’s Power Corp. dominated Canada’s China policy for decades: There is a lot of money to be made there, and that money and more foreign contacts will lead to political liberalization and human rights.

No one believes that anymore. China was moving in a more repressive direction before the pandemic, and the variegated mischief in Wuhan only confirmed it. Even the Trudeau-Mulroney-Chrétien-Martin-Trudeau bastion of support for China did not survive the kidnapping of the “Two Michaels.”

So it was in November 2022 when Apple CEO Tim Cook unveiled a China-only update for the iPhone. It made it more difficult for Chinese customers to use the “AirDrop” feature, which permits iPhone users to transfer information between them when close by, thereby avoiding the internet censorship of the Chinese communist regime. That feature is most helpful in arranging protests in authoritarian China. The CCP doesn’t like that, and what the CCP doesn’t like, Cook doesn’t like, and so Apple took action that assisted the communist regime.