Apple reportedly instructed its suppliers on Friday to ensure all components made in Taiwan are labeled “Taiwan, China” or “Chinese Taipei,” in accordance with speech codes enforced by the tyranny in Beijing.
According to a report by Nikkei Asia, Apple told its suppliers that China is cracking down on violations of a customs regulation that requires products from Taiwan to be labeled with language that plainly states, falsely, Taiwan is part of China.
Labeling unacceptable to China includes the traditional “Made in Taiwan” label, or references to the “Republic of China,” the formal name of the Taiwanese government. On the other hand, Taiwanese regulations require manufacturers to work either “Taiwan” or “Republic of China” into their product labels.
“Using the phrase ‘Made in Taiwan’ on any import declaration forms, documents or cartons could cause shipments to be held and checked by Chinese customs, the sources added. Penalties for violating such a rule is a fine of up to 4,000 yuan ($592) or, in the worst-case scenario, the shipment being rejected,” a source told Nikkei Asia.
With tensions rising after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) visit to Taiwan last week, the Chinese Communist regime is presumably tightening every Taiwan-related screw it can find. Shipments from Taiwan to a facility in China that assembles iPhones were delayed for a close inspection of product labels last Thursday. A senior executive for the company that owns the facility, Pegatron, met with Pelosi during her visit to Taiwan the day before the shipment was held.
Sources told Bloomberg News on Friday that China is tightening enforcement of many import rules on Taiwanese products, including rules announced over seven years ago that were never enforced until this week.
Bloomberg quoted a Taiwanese Ministry of Economic Affairs official who said a growing number of labeling citations by Chinese customs were reported over the past week. The official added the Taiwanese government is unaware of any export shipments that have been outright confiscated by China.
Tensions across the Taiwan Strait notwithstanding, China remains Taiwan’s largest trading partner, which would theoretically give Beijing a great deal of leverage to punish Taiwan after Pelosi’s visit. However, China is heavily reliant on Taiwan for semiconductor supplies, so the Chinese Communist Party might be reluctant to take a heavy hand in that industry.
“China this week suspended some fish and fruit imports from Taiwan, citing excessive pesticide residue detected on products since last year and some frozen fish packages that tested positive for coronavirus in June. Exports of natural sand, used in construction, were also banned,” Bloomberg noted.
The UK Guardian on Sunday reported some pushback against Apple for complying so quickly with China’s censorship demands:
The choice to require suppliers to deny Taiwan’s independent existence has led to criticism from around the world. GreatFire, which works against Chinese censorship online, noted that the move was an escalation from a previous slight by Apple, which removed the Taiwan flag from emoji keyboards for users in China and Hong Kong. “Is it a question of time before Apple starts removing apps whose name contains the characters [for] Taiwan without specifying ‘province of China’,” the organization asked.
“Unfortunately, we suspect that Apple’s ‘red-line’, the moment where it will say: ‘Stop, no longer, we cannot continue to collaborate with the Chinese regime and enforce its requests for censorship,’ is nowhere close,” GreatFire’s Benjamin Ismail told the Register news site.
Industry observers note that Apple is expected to announce the latest version of its flagship smartphone, the iPhone 14, in September, and the company is already grappling with supply-chain problems, so it might see this as an exceptionally risky moment to defy Beijing.
The Guardian noted that Apple has successfully diversified production by moving some of its iPhone construction to India and Brazil, but those factories primarily assemble phones for local markets, so for the time being Apple remains heavily dependent on its partnership with the brutal Chinese government.
Apple has been criticized in the past for bending over backwards to protect its Chinese interests. In 2016, the company was pressured by the Chinese Communists into signing a $275 billion deal that effectively put Apple at China’s mercy – and committed Apple to help Chinese firms develop their own “advanced manufacturing technologies.”
Several Apple suppliers have been implicated in the use of forced labor from the oppressed Uyghur Muslims of Xinjiang province. Apple, which insists it has zero tolerance for forced labor, quietly broke ties with these suppliers after their complicity was revealed by human rights activists.
Apple reportedly lobbied against the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), which went into effect in June. The UFLPA imposes much stricter requirements on importers to prove their supply chains are not tainted with forced labor.