Apple and Biden Aren’t Aligned on China

If Apple was a country, its annual sales—nearly $400 billion last year—would make it roughly the 40th biggest economy in the world, ahead of Iran and on par with Denmark. It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that Apple appears to have its own foreign policy, one that isn’t always totally aligned with U.S. policy, at least when it comes to dealing with China. Even as the Biden administration has been putting limits on China’s access to certain advanced U.S. technologies, Apple has been effectively helping China develop its own advanced technology by doing business with Chinese firms. As my colleague Wayne Ma reported today, Apple is testing Chinese-made displays for possible use in its Vision Pro mixed-reality headset.

The story says the displays Apple is testing, which use an advanced tech called Micro-OLEDs, are made by two Chinese firms, BOE Technology and SeeYa Technology. The market for Micro-OLEDS is still new, and other companies, such as Samsung, are only now starting to invest enough money to build manufacturing capacity. (Sony is currently Apple’s supplier, but it also hasn’t spent the money to expand capacity to meet Apple’s expected needs, our story says.) In contrast, the two Chinese companies, with the support of Chinese government subsidies, have aggressively bankrolled the development of manufacturing capacity for Micro-OLEDs.