Will Apple be the last US tech giant left in China?

There was a time when US tech giants were all in China, even Facebook. Today, Apple’s huge presence in the country looks increasingly conspicuous.

Last week Microsoft, which still operates in China, announced it would shut down its social network, LinkedIn, there.

The company said having to comply with the Chinese state had become increasingly challenging, so it pulled the plug.

Apple has its own censorship problems in the country.

The BBC reported two popular religious apps were removed from the Apple App Store last week.

And then emerged that Amazon-owned Audible and the Yahoo Finance app had also been pulled down.

Apple Censorship, a group that monitors the App Store, says it has seen an increase in apps being removed this month.

So what’s going on?

It is notoriously difficult to assess what is happening behind closed doors in Beijing.

However, what is becoming increasingly clear is that Apple and Microsoft are involved in an internal battle between the authorities and the Chinese tech industry.

China has its big tech titans – Tencent, Alibaba, and Huawei – which are huge global companies. But the Chinese government has grown concerned about the power they wield.

American companies have not been spared from the “great technological repression”.

“The crackdown suggests that both Apple and Microsoft are very much aware that their position is weaker than it has been in recent years. They know they have to walk carefully,” says James Griffiths, author of The Great Firewall of China.

The straw that broke the camel’s back for Microsoft appears to be a law expected to go into effect on November 1 – the Personal Information Protection Act (PIPL) – that would have required the company to comply with more regulation.

Microsoft alludes to you in a statement explaining its decision to withdraw LinkedIn: “We are facing a significantly more challenging operating environment and increased compliance requirements in China.”

Graham Webster, editor-in-chief of the DigiChina Project at Stanford University, said, “I think they decided it wasn’t worth it.”

Mr. Webster links the decision to say goodbye to LinkedIn to the upcoming implementation of the PIPL.

Apple, however, has a different set of priorities in China than Microsoft.

It is deeply entangled in the country, far more so than any other US tech company.

In the last quarter, Apple made nearly $ 15 billion in revenue in China and Taiwan, an extraordinary figure.

Its global supply chain also depends on Chinese manufacturing. And to be in China, Apple knows it has to abide by the country’s rules, even if it means censorship.

You may be wondering: Why doesn’t Apple sell hardware in China and forget the App Store?

The problem is that Apple believes the App Store and the iPhone are inseparable. It doesn’t want to create a side-loading app precedent, where people can download apps to an iPhone away from the App Store.

For one thing, he would make a lot less money.

So, if Apple is going to sell products in China, it is essential to keep the App Store operational in that country.

“Apple has been removing apps and basically censoring the App Store in one way or another for years,” says Webster.

But Griffiths argues that censorship has slowly gotten tougher during Apple’s time in the country.

“Apple has a devil’s deal here,” he says.

“Once you start agreeing to remove apps, it doesn’t really stop.”

Other companies saw the writing on the wall before Microsoft.

Google removed its search engine from China in 2010 after what was rumored to be a Chinese hacking attack. The company said it was no longer happy to censor searches.

Rebecca Fannin, author of Silicon Dragons, believes Microsoft’s withdrawal of LinkedIn now makes Apple a “big target”.

But he thinks Apple will fight to stay in China.

“You know Apple is truly one of the market leaders in China … I don’t see Apple withdrawing from China for any of these problems anytime soon,” he says.

What we don’t know are the conversations that are taking place behind closed doors between Apple and the Chinese authorities.

Maybe Apple rejects it, and maybe many apps are still active and living on the App Store in China because Apple defended them. We do not know.

Apple rarely comments on these stories and indicates its human rights policy to journalists, which states that it will follow the laws of the countries in which it operates, even if it disagrees with them.

And in China they did just that.

When the authorities really want an app to be removed, it is removed.

Apple’s presence in the country now almost feels like a hangover from another era. Big Tech simply doesn’t have much presence in China anymore.

The question now is how much regulation, how much compliance – and how much censorship – is too much?