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Financial Times journalist Patrick McGee has released a gripping new book that meticulously exposes Apple’s deeply troubling ties with China, revealing how these connections fueled the communist regime’s rise to a global manufacturing powerhouse.

(Nikkei Montage / Reuters)

In an interview with The Free Press founder Bari Weiss, McGee revealed key insights from his new book, Apple in China, detailing Apple’s complex relationship with the country.

Presently, approximately 155 million Americans own an iPhone – a remarkable figure that McGee contends would have been unattainable without Apple’s substantial investments in China.

“I think it’s fairly straightforward that China is the only place on the planet that has the tech competence in terms of manufacturing capability, certainly the price, the cost, the quantity, the scale,” McGee told Weiss. My novel argument is that it has those skills because Apple built them there, right? It’s not that China offered something to Apple. Apple didn’t find these skills in China; it shipped people over by the plane load and created them.”

“And so it’s this another layer of nuance that Apple is dependent on the very capabilities that it created. And I think this is like the biggest untold story in tech over the last 25 years. And like, my jaw was on the floor as I talked to 200 people and sort of unraveled it all. But I mean, some of the numbers— anytime you’re dealing with Apple, the numbers are just crazy. And so the two numbers that really stick out at me are that the number of people they have trained in China since 2008 is 28 million,” the Apple in China authored continued.”

“That’s larger than the labor force of California. And the investments they were making in China by 2015 were $55 billion a year. And that’s such a large number that I couldn’t find any corporate equivalent,” he added. “I had to go to nation-building efforts, and I took the Marshall Plan, the most famous nation-building effort ever, converted it to 2015 dollars, and you realize that Apple’s investing in China twice that of the annual spend of the Marshall Plan. And the Marshall Plan was for 16 countries.”

McGee outlines Apple's production hurdles and economic incentives that propelled this transformative shift, which he compares to a geopolitical event as significant as the fall of the Berlin Wall.

“I have these chapters in the book where they're trying to build iPods and the Sunflower iMac. You might remember it; it sort of looks anthropomorphic, like a Pixar lamp. It's really sexy, and my God, is it a complicated product to build,” McGee said. “And so Apple's trying to do it in Taiwan, but with the help of Singapore, Japan—you know, basically all of Southeast Asia, including China. But the more you're doing things a little bit in China and comparing the costs, the flexible demand of labor, and just the armies of affordable labor, the more it looks like China is the way to go. And they just rapidly begin to consolidate in 2003.”

“So, the sort of fun line I have is that in 1999, zero products from Apple were being made in China. By 2009, virtually all of them were. And that transition, I compare to a geopolitical event, like the fall of the Berlin Wall. But it took place over many years. And it's one that I don't think we've really grappled with or understood,” the author added.

Under Tim Cook’s leadership, Apple has significantly deepened its investment in China, most notably through a secretive $275 billion, five-year agreement signed in 2016 with Chinese officials to bolster the country’s economy and technological capabilities, The Information reported in 2021. The deal, aimed at mitigating regulatory threats, included commitments to build new retail stores, research and development centers, and renewable energy projects, while fostering partnerships with local suppliers like Foxconn and enhancing China’s supply chain infrastructure.

President Donald Trump has been pushing Apple to move its manufacturing away from China, primarily through aggressive tariff policies aimed at incentivizing U.S.-based production. Since his first term, Trump has consistently advocated for Apple to bring iPhone and other product manufacturing to the United States, famously vowing in 2016, “I’m going to get Apple to start making their computers and their iPhones on our land, not in China.”

Apple has responded by shifting production for U.S.-bound iPhones to India and iPads, Apple Watches, and other products to Vietnam, with Cook confirming that by 2026, most iPhones sold in the U.S. will be made in India.

In February 2025, Apple announced a commitment to invest over $500 billion in the U.S. over the next four years, aimed at strengthening domestic manufacturing and advancing semiconductor production.