Apple has pledged to increase its investment in China as tensions between Washington and Beijing rage on.
CEO Tim Cook said on Wednesday that the tech giant told China’s industry minister, Li Lecheng, the iPhone maker will keep investing in China, according to an official summary of their meeting in Beijing released by the Chinese government.
The report gave no details of the size of the potential investment.
Many US companies have become cautious about relations with China as the world’s two biggest economies clash over tariffs and as United States President Donald Trump seeks to promote manufacturing in the US rather than elsewhere.
The California-based company, which has also made investment pledges to Washington, DC, has so far remained relatively unscathed by the trade war between the US and China. Other companies, such as Nvidia and Qualcomm, have found themselves the target of Chinese investigations.
Washington has long placed sanctions on Chinese companies, such as Huawei.
A Shanghai-based government affairs consultant, who requested anonymity because he was not authorised to speak with the media, said US companies are wary of angering a White House that could hurt them at home in the world’s biggest consumer market for appearing too pro-China, the Reuters news agency reported.
At the same time, they are seeking to avoid appearing insincere in Beijing, where they have pledged to be “in China, for China”, he added.
In August, Cook presented Trump with a custom US-made plaque mounted on a 24-carat gold stand commemorating Apple’s “American Manufacturing Program”, after saying it would invest an additional $100bn in domestic manufacturing.
“This may place Apple in the crosshairs of President Trump and his policies, but given Apple’s operations, it is possible that this move was pre-approved by the administration. These vague announcements may also be purely a public relations tactic rather than anything meaningful, given that tangible investments were never presented to the public,” Babak Hafezi, chief executive officer at Hafezi Capital, an international consulting firm, told Al Jazeera.
When Cook visited China in March, Apple made public its plans for a new clean energy fund there worth $101m (720 million yuan).
Meanwhile, Apple, which relies on suppliers and factories in China where most of its iPhones are assembled, has been trying to shift some manufacturing capacity to India.
“India was a tactic to diversify its supply chain production, increase redundancy, and mitigate geopolitical risk,” Hafezi said.
Apple’s COO Sabih Khan on Tuesday visited Lens Technology, a Chinese glass supplier for Apple, the Changsha-based company said in a statement on Wednesday.
Lens Technology produces glass covers for Apple products, including the iPhone and Apple Watch, and has been a partner for 19 years, it said.
China hopes Apple will continue to explore the Chinese market and grow together with Chinese suppliers, Industry Minister Li Lecheng, who is also in charge of infotech, told Cook, adding that China would continue to foster a good business environment for foreign companies, including Apple.
Growth in China
Apple’s shipments in China grew 0.6 percent from a year earlier to 10.8 million units in the third quarter against the backdrop of sluggish demand in China’s smartphone market, according to data research firm IDC on Wednesday.
Boosted by the iPhone 17 series, it was the only brand among China’s three biggest vendors to achieve growth in shipments during the period.
As part of his visit to China this week, Cook visited Apple’s store in Shanghai and met Chinese game developers and the designer of the popular Labubu dolls, he said in posts on China’s X-like Weibo.
On Monday, he said the iPhone Air would be available for pre-order in China after the industry ministry cleared the way for major telecom operators to support its eSIM functionality.
“The business community has always been a stabiliser of China-US relations and a promoter of pragmatic cooperation,” China’s ambassador to the US, Xie Feng, said during an event in Washington on Tuesday.
Many US companies have “chosen China” and are benefiting both countries, Xie added.
On Wall Street, Apple’s stock is trending upwards. As of 11:30am in New York (15:30 GMT), it is up by about 1 percent.
The latest comments come amid increasing tensions between Washington and Beijing this week. On Wednesday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters the US is ready to impose new tariffs over its purchase of Russian oil.
Also, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer weighed in on China’s expansion of rare earth mineral export controls. Greer called it a complete repudiation of US-Chinese trade agreements over the past six months, fueling concerns of a setback in trade talks.
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