Will Apple be the final US technology behemoth in China? This has been recent question of many these days. This past week, it was announced that Microsoft, which maintains a presence in China, would be closing down its social networking site, LinkedIn.
The company decided to terminate the project due to the increasing difficulty in complying with the requirements of the Chinese government.
Apple is confronted with a unique set of censorship issues in the country where it operates
According to the BBC, Apple has removed two popular religious apps from its app store because they were considered offensive.
It was later revealed that Yahoo Finance and Amazon-owned Audible had also been blocked from the site.
Apple Censorship, a group that monitors the App Store, has reported that the number of apps being removed has increased this month compared to the previous month.
There has been a significant technological breakdown
It is notoriously difficult to gain insight into what is going on behind closed doors in Beijing.
Despite this, it is becoming increasingly clear that Apple and Microsoft are embroiled in a power struggle in China between the Communist Party and the country’s technology industry.
The Chinese technology sector is dominated by multinational corporations such as Tencent, Alibaba, and Huawei. The Chinese government, on the other hand, is concerned about the extent to which they have gained power.
Alibaba was fined a record $2.8 billion (£2 billion) by the United States Department of Justice at the end of April for abusing its dominant market position.
In August, the Chinese government unveiled a five-year plan to regulate the country’s technology sector.
A further development is that the cryptocurrency known as Bitcoin has become even more tightly controlled by the government.
There has been no exemption from the “great tech crackdown” in the United States’ business community.
As a result of the crackdown, it’s clear that both Apple and Microsoft are acutely aware of how precarious their positions are now in comparison to prior years. Their understanding of the importance of exercising extreme caution is well-founded.” James Griffiths, a leading authority on China’s Great Wall, agrees.
The Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL), which was set to take effect on November 1 and impose an additional regulatory burden on Microsoft, may have been the final straw in the company’s decision.
China presents a significantly more difficult operating environment, as well as stricter regulatory compliance requirements. According to a statement from Microsoft, which explains its decision to remove LinkedIn.
“I believe they came to the conclusion that it was simply not worth it,” said Graham Webster, editor-in-chief of the DigiChina Project.
Mr. Webster cites the impending enforcement of the PIPL as a reason for his decision to leave LinkedIn.
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