“One part of the Chinese propaganda machine is taking issue with another’s latest attack on Apple. China Central Television started the back-and-forth last week, when it devoted 20 minutes of a July 11 news show to a segment highlighting the dangers of the iPhone’s location-based service software,” Bruce Einhorn reports for Businessweek. “The function can collect data and result in the loss of state secrets, according to CCTV’s report.”
“China Daily, the official English-language newspaper, today published a report saying, in effect, that’s nonsense,” Einhorn reports. “Still, Apple isn’t taking any chances. When confronted by the Chinese media, even with an accusation that makes little sense, the company has learned the best strategy is to be humble.”
“‘We appreciate CCTV’s effort to educate customers on a topic we think is very important,’ the company politely said in a statement that denied Apple ‘worked with any government from any country to create a backdoor in any of our products or services,'” Einhorn reports. “”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
Apple shoots down Chinese accusation that ‘iPhone endangers national security,’ blasts Android – July 13, 2014
Chinese state-run media: Apple iPhone a danger to China national security – July 11, 2014
China’s CCTV is having some internal problems at the moment and one of their lead anchors was actually arrested yesterday on corruption charges due to his involvement with the Chinese branch of global PR company Edelman
http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/14/ties-to-edelman-may-have-ensnared-cctv-anchor/
Now Edelman counts Samsung as their 2nd largest PR client with a $500 million budget, just behind Unilever. Could these factors be related? Just throwing it out there…
Wow look at that. Even Communist China will regulate their industries when corruption is grossly obvious. Too bad the US won’t. Especially not if you’re a banker.
It’s more a matter of modern day Icaruses like Mr Chenggang thinking they can fly higher and higher closer to the sun.
“Don’t worry, we’ll keep you in the shade” – large interests tell him, often not aligned with the government’s own.
Then the problem becomes the fact that China gov uses HQ-9 surface-to-air missiles.
Well, I think you missed this today:
Citigroup Confirms $7 Billion Mortgage Settlement, Then Beats Earnings Estimates
http://www.thewire.com/business/2014/07/citibank-confirms-7-billion-settlement-second-quarter-earnings/374359/
That’s historic, although quite late. I’d have preferred Citigroup was shut down and sold off to smaller entities. But ‘too big to fail’ is the big FAIL of our age and isn’t going anywhere soon.
China has a number of businesses tied to Apple and any smear campaigns should anger Chinese suppliers, carriers and factories that depend on Apple for business. It just seems so foolish to stir up a hornet’s nest.
The PRC government may be very pissed at Apple for not getting unrestricted access to Apple’s user data. So they start a choreographed smear campaign with seemingly diverse opinions, but where ultimately every single printed character comes straight from the government itself.
Exactly. It’s much easier to spy on Android phones, so much so that it’s easier and cheaper to FUD people into not buying iPhones than it is to figure out how to consistently break into them.
Ain’t corruption just grand!
The function can collect data and result in the loss of state secrets
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Nasty old China: Criminal nation. Nothing changes. Apparently this bullshit propaganda is all about promoting their won POS knockoff wannabe stupidphones they want to foist on their sucker citizens.
Not gonna work! China’s underground black market has already proven that it WILL get the iPhones into the country whether their criminal dickhead government likes it or not. Crime: The inevitable populace response to the idiocy known as ‘communism’. It’s a lesson of history.
Oh and I can propagandize too!
CHINA SUCKS!
CHINA SUCKS!
CHINA SUCKS!
Etc. And it’s just as effective. 😆
Correction: …about promoting their OWN pos knockoff…
7 minutes to my tea time.
…the company politely said in a statement that denied Apple ‘worked with any government from any country to create a backdoor in any of our products or services
Which of course is a WONDERFUL secret SLAP at the Chinese government, who has been proven to do EXACTLY THAT!
And also, of course, so has the NSA as a rogue part of #MyStupidGovernment. That’s why I constantly ask if what’s going on in the “global economy” is actually the Chinafication of the USA, rather than vice versa. What a mess.
Here is another tidbit that was mentioned earlier by someone though no link was posted.
It’s similar to gkmac’s post. Oh I found it on CNN, imagine that.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/13/world/asia/china-tv-anchor-detained/index.html?hpt=hp_t5
We’re watching a pissing match between powerful factions within the ruling elite of the PRC.
China Central Television has closer ties to the government proper – think provincial bureaucrats. China Daily is closer to the more cosmopolitan business class.
The CCT/Government concern is that Apple has reversed course and will not be playing ball with the surveillance ‘requirements’ the government originally laid out for Apple, as a prerequisite for selling iDevices in China. It’s straight out of the GOP’s playbook – claim that your enemy’s greatest strength is actually a weakness & bludgeon them with it. Meanwhile, the CD/Business side are afraid of the vast amounts of money that will be lost, across many business sectors, if Apple isn’t allowed to sell product (and produce it in chinese factories) unimpeded. Thus they are essentially telling the reactionaries at CCT to STFU.
It is important to note, and an extremely good sign, that Apple & Cook rethought their position on these hardware & software backdoors, which has created this schism we see here in PRC. It was once a fait accompli that Apple would cooperate on this sort of thing (NSA certainly assumed so – as Snowdon’s PP slide indicated). Now … let’s just say things are less certain. Apple isn’t the only company putting on the brakes (and they haven’t made a complete 180 – yet), but they are one of the few that has the financial wherewithal and internal structure to most effectively resist these totalitarian moves, and at least outwardly seems more determined than most to do so.
Most important now is that with Apple starting to break away from Android across the globe, in terms of popularity and sales, the more ‘uncertain’ position they’ve taken, vis a vis cooperating with the total surveillance program, is causing quite a bit of consternation in the Halls of Power – not just in China, but in many parts of the world.
Unfortunately, this is no guarantee of anything. We The People have been denied a place at the table where corporations and governments argue this out. And that means, if more money is at stake to be lost than Apple has principles, ultimately we lose.
This is what results from counting corporations as ‘people’, with ‘religious rights’ and ‘free speech’ protections. They and governments essentially become like the Gods of Olympus – making plans and tossing thunderbolts arbitrarily. While they are no less false than the gods of Greece, the real people are nonetheless left to watch from below as they engage in debates that actually concern us more than they. And, of course, suffer the real consequences of their actions and folly.