Patrick McGee’s “Apple in China” isn’t just a business book—it’s a chronicle of how the world’s most valuable company became inextricably tied to America’s chief geopolitical rival, transforming both in the process.
The story begins not with strategy or vision, but with embarrassment. Patrick McGee, then the Apple reporter for the Financial Times, was interviewing the CEO of Qualcomm—a $200 billion chip designer that powers virtually every 3G, 4G, and 5G device on the planet. The CEO mentioned that during COVID, he had quarantined for 14 days just to visit factories in Taiwan. McGee was puzzled. Qualcomm is a fabless company—they don’t manufacture chips themselves. Why the visit?
“We follow the Apple model,” the CEO explained.
McGee realized he had no idea what that meant. He was covering Apple, and he didn’t understand the fundamental architecture of how the company actually operated. That moment of professional shame became the genesis of one of the most important business books of the past two decades—a work that traces not just Apple’s history, but the evolution of US-China relations, global supply chains, and the hollowing out of American manufacturing capacity.
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