China Said to Exclude Apple From Procurement List
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
#2>Huawei, ZTE Banned From Selling to U.S. Government http://techonomy.com/2013/04/huawei-zte-banned-from-selling-...
#3>Obama Imposes Tariffs On Chinese Tires http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/11/obama-imposes-tarif...
#4>Chinese exclusion policy of NASA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_exclusion_policy_of_NAS...
#5>Obama BANS U.S. government from buying Chinese-made computer technology over cyber-attack fears http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2300518/Obama-BANS-U...
What was the news again?
The fact that the US also does this – something we're all aware of – doesn't change the fact that this is interesting news!
On top of that, at least in my experience, products made in China by Chinese companies are either knock-offs of western products, made cheaply, or they are just crappy products in general. Sure, the parts can be fabricated, but it's the product design that is sorely lacking. Again, this is anecdotal, so your mileage may vary.
That does not mean that you cannot purchase quality Chinese goods.
It is in no way limited to China - entire Asia works like this.
What I found interesting in the one time I was part of a negotiation with a Chinese manufacturer (Quanta at the time) they really would build the gadget we needed for what ever price we asked for, except they knew that building it for less than $X would mean (probably unacceptable) corners would be cut. And perhaps more interestingly they knew many of the corners they would cut to get to the price, so when contract language was added/proposed that cut off that shortcut it forced a revisit to the price negotiations.
It really was you get exactly what you pay for, but more importantly if you didn't understand what you were paying for then you ran the risk of being surprised at what you got. One of those times where I saw how little I would be able to really know about the ins and outs of that process without dedicating a lot of time and running a lot of projects through that channel.
They made huge improvements (Huawei, Meizu, Xiaomi, others) and are going to outsell brands like Apple and Samsung.
Agreed, and we can only expect more improvement as China moves up the value chain.
>and are going to outsell brands like Apple and Samsung
In China, sure. I think Xiaomi is neck-and-neck with Samsung right now. But it will take a bit longer in the rest of the world for those firms to compete elsewhere. I expect an integration of product mix, with China joining the club of developed nations, rather than a takeover of manufacturing by Chinese producers.
Chinese brands are in the position of Japanese brands in the late 70s, trying to shed a reputation for making "cheap knock-offs," even when those knock-offs were better than the originals.
The path to fast growth in Asia seems to be: industrialize, specialize in cheap products, move into massed-produced consumer goods, improve quality by copying foreign competitors, then use your new engineering knowledge earned by cloning competitors' products to leapfrog the competition.
Japan did it to us, Korea did it to Japan, and now China will most likely be next.
And don't think the United States didn't do it ourselves. Heck, we invented the model during the industrial revolution when we leapfrogged Europe using plenty of "borrowed" ideas.
The upshot though is that economic growth is mostly a universal good these days. Certainly both the United States and Japan are better off than they would have been if Japan never caught up with us. We should be celebrating the rise of China's people, not fearing it.
And while their government may be antagonistic and repressive, it is leaps and bounds better than it was a few decades ago. If one were to construct a Maslow's hierarchy of needs for the Four Freedoms, Freedom from Want would be at its base. Further progress seems likely.
The vector is pointed in the right direction for everyone involved. All we have to do is not screw up the course.
They tried and failed.
Now I understand that national defense is paramount. Some restrictions for national defense may be necessary (and neither China nor the US has helped promote trust in each other's products for defense uses lately), but trade restrictions should only be used as a last resort.
We often forget that we have been down this road before. The world on the eve of World War I looked far more like the world of today than the world of our parents.
The entire globe was experiencing massively interconnected rapid economic growth, not just from industrialization, but from the speed and ease of global trade which the new technologies enabled. American ice was sold in India, India tea in Russia, German farm implements in Britain, and British everything everywhere.
Then came first the Great War, and then the Great Depression. And with the Depression came every politician's favorite way to fight economic woes: keep out the foreigners. One restraint led to immediate retaliation by other nations, creating a frenetic negative feedback loop, until finally the open system collapsed in its entirety.
And in its place we created a hidebound monstrosity, an incomprehensible series of trade regulations that were nearly impossible to navigate.
Of course this protectionism only drove us deeper into the Depression, caused global output to plummet to historic lows, made the global economic engine seize like an un-oiled V8, and threw lit thermite into the already smoldering tinderbox of militant nationalism.
It took two World Wars, a global standoff that threatened to consume all of civilization in nuclear holocaust, and most of a century to get back to where we started. Let's not throw away those hard-won gains over international intrigue. Trillions of dollars, and the lives they support, are at stake here.
Free trade is good. Full stop. It builds massive wealth through compounding growth. It pulls people out of dire poverty. And it stops wars.
To step away from it now, just as we enter a truly globalized world, would be the single largest self-inflicted wound to the global economy since the collapse of Rome.
Trade wars collapse nations, and this is how they begin. Tit-for-tat escalates quickly, and it is unfathomably reckless for a country that is dependent upon exports to ban products from the largest importer of its goods.
Tech. That is a different ball game. Any part of the device could be vulnerable. The components, the software, or the entire system. That being said, it is very difficult to analyze. When it is difficult to analyze you put your self at massive risk to lose diplomatic strategy, military secrets, financial secrets, and far beyond. Is it worth the risk? Nope.
Will that hurt 'international trade'? Yes. Will this cause another Cold War? No.
"Protecting and promoting their own industries has paid them well..."
Protectionism has paid certain members of China's elite very well at the extreme expense of the firms that could actually produce the goods most efficiently.
Many of those would-be producers are Americans, and if you think the automotive industry, Hollywood, and SV haven't been howling for retaliatory sanctions for years, you would be very wrong. See e.g. the blacklisting of Huawei gear from US government IT systems.
Further protectionism strengthens their hand, and if they get their way, we have open breakdown in trade. That isn't "scaremongering." It is simple fact, confirmed by countless historical examples.
The new Chinese leaders are like a man standing on the edge of a cliff saying "Well, every step I've taken thus far in this direction has moved me closer to my goal. Why shall the next be any different?"
National security is something with which real adults concern themselves, so it makes a good excuse for local oligarchs to erect trade barriers to protect their interests.
By debunking the argument they make ("security"), often the true impetus becomes clear ("profit.")
BYOD phenomenon:
* company issues BlackBerry or Windows 6.x phones
* executive has money to burn, likes the iPhone/iPad
* executive brings iPhone/iPad to work and tells I.T. guy "hook me up or you're fired"
* I.T. makes an exception, deals with it
* other people start bringing their iPhone/iPad to work
* corporate policy adjusts and everybody can bring iOS/Android, corporate issues iOS/Android
* players like Citrix, MobileIron, etc., have a market for Mobile Device Management
* corrupt official has money to burn
* corrupt official buys MacBook/iOS/iPad or Samsung, etc.
* corrupt official uses his stuff at work despite policy
* underlings want to show off too and bring their devices
* Hmmm, except the US gov't still depends on BlackBerry, at least DHS[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/08/us-usa-china-huawe...
I can't help but think this is more of a move to help China's internal industries, but it's hard to say without understanding the political climate.
Australia recently banned the use of Chinese equipment from our national broadband rollout for national security reasons so this isn't an unprecedented move.
The iPhone is a luxury product in big demand, and being out of favor with the government will make it in even greater demand. The people targeted by Apple like their bling, people buy the foreign product because it's higher status and more trusted than the local product; in fact they'll go to Hong Kong to buy foreign products because they're afraid the one they buy locally will be counterfeit or crappy localized version. People trust Apple more than they trust the government or the Xiaomi knockoff.
Similar tactics were used in the past to force Microsoft to give the Chinese government access to Windows source code through the China Information Technology Security Certification Center (CNITSEC) Source Code Review Lab.
The US government has accused China of abusing CNITSEC's access to Windows to develop zero-day exploits for offensive use, so if that's true there's an ulterior motive there as well.
That's over and above the article's claim that the Chinese government wants to reduce the number of American tech firms' products in official Chinese government use.
The creators of the OS always have more control over how the phone works than the owner. iOS is more locked down than Android (no access to root FS) but I would argue that 99% of users don't know the difference and just blindly install software from third parties.