Apr 28, 2026 · 20 min · 15 segments
“We trained a whole country.” It sounds like an exaggeration. It’s not - according to Patrick McGee, author of Apple in China. So what actually happened in China?
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You had this forceful state that was deploying what was at the time the world's largest population.
So within China, you have something called the floating population, which is essentially these rural migrants who go to places like Shenzhen, right, this special economic zone, that just grows like wildfire, and it grows so quickly because China has a, a specific industrial policy to lure in foreign expertise, foreign capital.
People forget how poor China was when Mao had died in 1976, and so there's this will to power that China wants to achieve, and they're gonna do it through manufacturing.
They need to rely on, at first, the Chinese diaspora, Hong Kong, later Taiwan, and then later the Japanese through Panasonic and then the Americans.
And so Apple sort of fits into this role where they realize that as their suppliers move, they can move more and more of their operations there.
The local governments are working hand-in-hand with the entrepreneurs, right? I compare government bureaucrats in China to, like, a venture capitalist who sits on your board and drives growth but actually directs policy for you.
You had this forceful state that was deploying what was at the time the world's largest population.
So within China, you have something called the floating population, which is essentially these rural migrants who go to places like Shenzhen, right, this special economic zone, that just grows like wildfire, and it grows so quickly because China has a, a specific industrial policy to lure in foreign expertise, foreign capital.
People forget how poor China was when Mao had died in 1976, and so there's this will to power that China wants to achieve, and they're gonna do it through manufacturing.
They need to rely on, at first, the Chinese diaspora, Hong Kong, later Taiwan, and then later the Japanese through Panasonic and then the Americans.
And so Apple sort of fits into this role where they realize that as their suppliers move, they can move more and more of their operations there.
The local governments are working hand-in-hand with the entrepreneurs, right? I compare government bureaucrats in China to, like, a venture capitalist who sits on your board and drives growth but actually directs policy for you.
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3 of 7
Owning Process, Not Factories
Here’s Apple’s real manufacturing secret.
Did Apple Build China?
How Apple supercharged China’s rise.
Apple’s Mandarin Apology Moment
When a rebuttal backfired spectacularly.
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