“Those apps, which appear in most countries’ versions of the App Store, do not currently appear in the Chinese version,” Fletcher reports. “Another app related to Rebiya Kadeer, who like the Dalai Lama is an exiled minority leader reviled by China’s authorities, is unavailable in the China App Store as well. The apparent censorship comes after carrier China Unicom launched iPhone sales two months ago, making regulatory approval of the phone’s contents in the country necessary for the first time. ‘We continue to comply with local laws,’ Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller said in an e-mail when asked about the missing apps. ‘Not all apps are available in every country.'”
“Chinese officials condemn the Dalai Lama as a dangerous ‘splittist’ seeking to separate Tibet from China, and have called him a ‘devil with a human face,'” Fletcher reports. “The Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959 after Chinese troops crushed an uprising in the capital city of Lhasa, solidifying Chinese control there. The religious figure remains widely revered by Tibetans.”
“Apple joins other U.S. technology giants including Yahoo and Google that have come under fire for complying with Chinese government demands on sensitive political issues. Human rights advocates criticized Yahoo when Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist, landed a 10-year prison sentence in 2005 partly because of e-mail evidence gained from his private Yahoo account. Yahoo said it was obeying Chinese law by handing the evidence to authorities,” Fletcher reports. “Google has been criticized for offering a censored version of its search engine for China at Google.cn, which blocks pornographic and some politically sensitive search results. Google has similarly said it must follow local laws and regulations.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lynn W.” for the heads up.]
Nice Apple….nice. Keep those dictators happy.
Yeah, come on Apple, iPhone, iSlate, iWorldpeace! Next: Apple iWeather for all!
When you get in bed with the devil things can get hot.
Is this right? No.
Would it make any difference to how things run in the PRC if it weren’t the case? No.
The simple fact is that the Chinese people are bombarded by the bias in their own state-run media and are, as a result, developing a juvenile arrogance with regards to how they believe their country should be perceived internationally.
In short, the vast majority of the population who could afford an iPhone are far too busy enjoying their newly established prosperity to care about the fate of Tibet or any of the supressed ethnic or religious minorities in the PRC and the West – including the ever-pragmatic former President Clinton – made a genuine mistake in giving so much to the PRC without concessions on many important human rights issues.
Way to show your principles are more valuable than money Apple. I thought you would be the one company that would “think different” about the Chinese market.
Come on, on step at a time. Give a little and let the iPhone with the soon to be data hungry owners start to crack the wall.
The more iPhones with added soon to be added wifi will start to find and seek out all the stuff the government bans. Then the truth will slowly come out.
The Trojan horse has landed in China and it is the iPhone.
NCG598
well said
The Chinese Government is Communist.
The Chinese people are happy, little, open market capitalists who look upon their government as an anachronistic bureaucracy that is fated to eventual, gradual change.
I’m sure that even Mao must have said that The Great Wall wasn’t built in a day.
Okay MCCFR, it wouldn’t make a difference to the masses really, so forget principles. AND let’s dig up another criticism of President Clinton while you’re at it, so little has happened regarding China in the last ten years. Is this a dusty Fox News talking point or what?
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1567047/apple-joins-persecution-dali-lama
The iPhone isn’t doing too well in China.
@ @NCG598
The article you referenced doesn’t quote any numbers about whether Apple iPhones are doing well or not. This one does:
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/23490/
P.S. – Remember folks where Apple’s manufacturing is done. Apple adding a token brick to the wall will mean little compared to the more subtle affects their innovation could have on China.
To all posters above:
Look around, ladies and gentlemen. How many of you DO NOT have a Chinese-made product staring you in the face and within reach? None of you, that’s how many.
The overwhelming majority of flat screen TVs, radios, tableware, drywall, toys, computers, clothing, cameras, etc., etc., etc., are made in the PRC. Have you purchased NONE of these objects in the past couple of decades? Have you somehow remained an economic island, free from the corruptions of Asian socialist corruption?
Be honest: Have YOU not contributed to the rise of this dictatorship PERSONALLY with your rampant consumerism? Is our government not being propped up artificially by this very country you’re so holier-than?
The hypocrisy on this site today (and specifically in this thread) is mind-boggling. Grow up, MDNers. The only thing you have to lose is the chains of your immaturity.
You nailed that hard. So much is made for “us” in China because labor is so cheap due to their much lower standards of living. I’ve often said that slavery is still very much alive and well. All we’ve really done is simply outsource it to China.
I live in Canada and I can’t buy or download the same music, videos/movies, TV shows and/or apps that are available on the US iTunes store.
I do have a US iTunes account via a US Gift Certificate so I could pick up more content. However, most of the radio/tv/communication apps don’t work or are blocked locally.
The same happens for our cousins in Boston with their Canadian acquired apps.
The Chinese just celebrated their 60th anniversary. If you want to see oppression, best you check out the previous regimes. Today, capitalism is flourishing, the people are better fed, clothed, housed and have full access to free health care.
It took the US nearly 2 hundred years before all woman and men were constitutionally allowed to vote. And still 30 or so million Americans have minimal access to affordable health care, but worse, nearly half of the American population don’t care if they ever have.
Funny how some people will condemn Apple for caving in to a Communist regime, but continue to buy the products manufactured in that same Communist country, therefor indirectly supporting them.
If these issues really offend them, then they should refrain from buying anything made in China, including those products of Apple. And for sure never set foot in a Walmart.
Boy, if Nixon only knew what he was going to initiate.
$$$$$ (or however many)
Anyone who knows me or has read any of my posts knows that I make Che Guevara look like Joe Lieberman, so I reject your point totally.
I would much prefer it if we could tell the PRC to go and take long walk of a short pier. I detest their actions in Tibet, their suppression of the various minorities in “their” country (especially the bits they acquired through colonial invasion) and, last but not least, their involvement in the disasters that are Zimbabwe and Sudan (to name but two of their economic colonies in Africa).
However, there is a simple fact that we gave the PRC too much “free market” support in the Eighties and Nineties without acquiring a single commitment on political or human rights and – as much as I like Clinton (who I personally consider to be one of the best Chief Executives of the last 40 years or so) – he does share some of the blame for this even if that blame is based on the political realities of being a President in a country with such a dysfunctional system of government where you can’t tell who your allies and enemies are from one day to the next.
However, to believe that a few applications on the iPhone will suddenly lead to some sort of Damascene conversion in terms of Beijing’s policy towards Tibet as a result of pressure from part of the Chinese population is – quite frankly – ludicrous.
And to believe that Apple, alone amongst all of the consumer electronics company, has the ability to make the ossified regime in Beijing see the errors of its ways shows that some people have lost their grip on reality.
Maybe if the PRC didn’t hold nearly $1 trillion in US government bonds combined with total foreign currency reserves of around $4 trillion, the developed, democratic world could poke Beijing with a stick and deflate some of the juvenile arrogance to which I referred.
Here’s a solution: stop sucking up to them. They shouldn’t have been given the Olympics and they shouldn’t be considered as a World Cup host. That’s a meaningful way of making a stand and I don’t buy that whole “keep politics out of sport” crap. The moment they got the Games, they made political capital out of it – they should have been denied that opportunity.
See what happens when you rattle my cage.
Apple has far more to lose in a battle with China than conceding over 3rd party apps that depict the Dalai Lama.
Also, Apple is up to 300k in sales thru Unicom, not counting the several million thru unofficial channels.
All iPhones total over two million. As the wireless carriers have reported that iPhones have been in China before an agreement with Apple was made. The gray market iPhones are not counted in the offical numbers.
If you consider 300k phones with at least one person to interact with is going to be 600k people. Plus all the gray market interactions not counted.
Let us not forget the apps that can be loaded to some of the phones from outside sources.
The addition of WiFi will follow on the next model or 4g iPhone. Expect greater numbers to be added to the carrier(s).
I will still say a wall built may not come down as fast as it was built. But continued growth of the iPhone and copies to follow will have a positive result as information will be increasing harder to hide and images or video can be sent, stored, and overall discussed by those who have it.
The fact that the iPhone is growing will put pressure on the older control as the younger, well educated, more affluent,and tech savy pressure for more freedom to be independant. Even a few that occupied the original Trojan Horse changed world history forever.
I believe the iPhone will be aTrojan Horse for the next generation in China.
Wake up, people, this is NOT surprising and will soon be coming to us, as soon as Maobama realizes he HAS to control media to hide all the disasters he’s inflicting on America.
China with all of its state control is nothing like we’re going to see here.
I am not an isolationist, but I am exceedingly disgusted with the state of human rights in China. I also dislike China’s attitude towards the illegal acquisition and application of intellectual property.
In addition to a total embargo on cheap, plastic McDonald’s toys (that’s a joke, but a sincere one), I would like to see Apple gradually transfer the manufacturing base for Apple products back into the U.S. Then the label can read “Manufactured and Assembled in the U.S.A” as well as “Designed by Apple in California.”
We need to buy back our national soul from China (i.e., live within our means and cease the deficit spending) and regenerate the manufacturing base in the U.S. That is the best way to boost the middle class and reestablish a more equitable distribution of wealth and prosperity in this country. That is not ‘socialist’ talk – that is merely economic practicality. A strong middle class fuels the economic engine, thus supporting the upper class, and also provides hope of upward mobility, thus reducing the level of dissatisfaction and anger of those at the opposite (and growing) end of the economic ladder. The alternative is an increasing disparity between rich and poor that will eventually culminate in civil unrest and anarchy.
@MCCFR,
Oops! Now you’ve gone & done it. You’ve gone and left yourself open to the self-righteous likes of Josh & ron in this forum. How dare you rate that liberal communist Clinton among the equals of the only true American presidents Reagan or either Bush?
Good luck with that…
Kevin,
Following an examination of the stuff that comes out of <strike>Tosh</strike>, sorry, Josh’s keyboard, I’ve decided that he is living proof of the dangers of consuming drugs or strong liquor whilst pregnant.
We know he wasn’t educated in the public school system by his own admission; but the poor man was obviously not well served by whatever system did the job instead.
The best thing is to feel some pity for him and ignore his ramblings until he can get back on his tranquilizers, the mushrooms wear off or he gets laid.
Get laid? Yeah, good luck–even _I_ know that isn’t likely to happen.
I have a sad, sad little life.
I used to get laid back in the good old days. But in my time we had to do it fully clothed and standing up.
In five feet of snow.
Josh,
The Obamanable doesn’t have to control the media, CNN, CBS and the entire alphabet soup news networks have been doing it already for him for decades now.