What China has to be careful of is eventually the US/EU decide to get tough on Chinese protectionism and impose significant barriers to goods manufactured in China. And that would also be bad for Apple again since they make their stuff in China.
I always hear this, but given the experience of most american companies in china, it seems little stretched.
From Ben Thompson at Stratechery:
This is a very big deal. Feel free to ignore anyone making snarky comments about China’s average monthly wage being the same as the price of an iPhone 5C. The two pertinent facts about China are that:
There is tremendous income disparity There are a TON of people
So while many Western markets may have a greater percentage of the population that can afford an iPhone, the absolute number of Chinese who are potential customers is very high as well.
The fact of the matter is that they do have a large population size and that presents its own problems for economic growth, believe it or not. Hell, it presents problems for the long-term stability of the country. Right now China's biggest threat is itself - corruption in China is a pervasive and massive problem (Source: https://www.transparency.org/cpi2014/results). China isn't the only country with a massive population; India has one too. Ben Thompson's facts are also true about India.
I've seen plenty of Chinese people whose actual individual monthly wage was almost certainly less than the price of an iPhone; it didn't stop them from having iPhones.
Last I heard, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Adobe, and a huge slew of smaller tech companies (if you want to stay in the same industry as Apple) had all colluded together to suppress wages.
I have a hard time believing anyone who claims this was an exception to a rule. It seems far more likely to believe it is the rule.
They lobbied for things like H-1B visas that let them get cheap people with limited options for career movement. You get the benefit of on-shore workers under tighter control and suppression of wages.
They colluded to influence labor standards over many years to declare broad swaths of overtime eligible employees as "exempt".
Apple and those tech giants got caught doing more direct collusion and unethical behavior. That isn't an unknown or shocking revelation. Pretty sure the mall bagel place I worked in tossed resumes from several other eateries.
Not to mention the governments of USA/EU etc. might do the same to Chinese companies.
> India's pro-market government
Is still behind China in many respects when it comes to pro-marketness.
> Not to mention the governments of USA/EU etc. might do the same to Chinese companies.
No I mentioned this explicitly.