One of Apple’s largest acoustic products suppliers, Goertek, on Wednesday said its vice-president Kazuyoshi Yoshinaga is leaving the company – a move that comes just days after his remarks about Apple suppliers exiting China made headlines.
In a stock exchange filing on Tuesday, Shenzhen-listed Goertek said Yoshinaga was leaving for “personal reasons”, without providing details. The statement did not mention his recent comments about the supply chain, and there is no evidence to show that his resignation was related to the fact that he painted a gloomy picture for the future of the Chinese manufacturing sector.
In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Yoshinaga was quoted as saying that Apple suppliers, including Goertek, have been moving manufacturing capacity out of China faster than observers had anticipated as US-China relations continue to deteriorate, laying bare the fact that China is losing some of its supply chain dominance to India and Vietnam.
Yoshinaga submitted his resignation on Tuesday and it came into effect immediately, according to the corporate statement.
Last year, efforts by Foxconn’s Zhengzhou plant to implement Beijing’s zero-Covid curbs, while scrambling to churn out Apple’s iPhone 14 orders, backfired, leading to violent clashes and a worker exodus that slowed production at the world’s largest iPhone factory ahead of the holiday shopping season. The incident forced Apple to admit for the first time that its once reliable Chinese supply chain had failed to deliver.
In the wake of the fiasco, Apple has reportedly been asking its mainland Chinese-based suppliers to speed up plans to set up factories outside China, but neither Apple or its Chinese suppliers, including Goertek, Luxshare and Foxconn, have publicly acknowledged doing so.
Yoshinaga’s remarks were the first time that a key player in Apple’s Chinese supply chain not only acknowledged the problems, but said the exodus was happening “far faster” than anticipated.
MacDailyNews Take: Do not anger the Chinese Communist Party by stating simple, obvious truths.
Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself. – Potter Stewart
Apple and China have been tied at the hip for decades, but, despite documented human rights abuses and actual genocide, it took quixotic “Zero COVID” lockdowns which resulted in widespread violent protests to actually test the relationship. – MacDailyNews, December 6, 2022
MacDailyNews Take, December 6, 2022:
Genocide, schmenocide — Shhh!
“What can we do to help?” Cook asks the CCP on bended knee. “Limit AirDrop? Remove that Quran app? Erase H&M stores from Apple Maps? Censor flags, books, and songs? You got it!”
But, to have the unmitigated gall to disrupt iPhone production? (Meaning: disrupt executive bonuses?) That’s what opens eyes to supply chain diversification in Apple’s C-Suite.
• Apple’s biggest risk is one of its own making, made specifically by Tim Cook, Chief Operating Officer turned Chief Executive Officer: The company’s potentially crippling over-dependence on CCP-controlled China. – MacDailyNews, February 16, 2023
See also: Tim Cook firmly latched Apple onto China’s CCP teat. What’s his plan for weaning it off? – November 2, 2022
• It’s smart for both Apple and Foxconn to diversify assembly outside of China. There’s no sense having all of your eggs in one basket. — MacDailyNews, April 2, 2019
• Apple should work to diversify production so as to not be beholden and utterly dependent upon a single country led by autocratic fools intent on tilting at windmills.
That way, a CEO who likes to oh-so bravely speak of human rights whenever and wherever he’s safe, might actually have some leverage to meaningfully affect human rights abuses in places like CCP-controlled China where they are being trampled daily instead of clamming up meekly like the weak hypocrite he is. (A white rose, Tim Cook is not. We call a spade a spade. Not sorry.) As a bonus, he’d also gain the ability to deliver products to customers, delighting them in a timely fashion. – MacDailyNews, April 27, 2022
• Apple cannot divest their dependence on China quickly enough (because they started years too late). – MacDailyNews. August 17, 2022
• Diversify, diversify, diversify – especially away from CCP-controlled China. – MacDailyNews, October 19, 2022
• The time to accelerate plans to move production out of China was November 9th 2016, but, hey, six years late is better than never! – MacDailyNews, December 4, 2022
Former U.S. President Richard Nixon, who opened relations with China in the early 1970’s, just before his death in 1994 remarked on China: We may have created a Frankenstein.
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Unintended consequences
At a certain point it seems there must be consequences for continuing to disparage and blame your customer (the US) which generates $500+ billion a year in trade for your economy and much more income in manufacturing. China can’t have it both ways.
Yup, hurry up and dump the bastards
Guy should be glad he wasn’t shown the window rather than the door!