My nominee for the best business book of 2025 is \u201cApple In China \u2013 The Capture of the World\u2019s Greatest Company\u201d. The author, Patrick McGee, was a decade long correspondent for the Financial Times including the Apple beat from 2019 to 2023. His book is both a history and an expose\u2019. If you aren\u2019t into business books read it anyway – it works on many levels to include economics, technology, geopolitics and human drama. The drama comes from two great protagonists, Steve Jobs and Tim Cook versus two world class antagonists, Xi Jinping and the CCP. Think Godzilla versus King Kong. The book also offers keen and revealing insight into the 21st century economy where titans of magnificent technologies schmooze and wrestle with nation states and their power brokers in their quest for the next big thing, disruptive advantages, zillions in market cap and global hegemony. There are also plenty of critical lessons for investors, business tycoons and diplomats.<\/p>\n
The story begins with Steve Jobs and his most extraordinary life journey from 1976 garage entrepreneur, to charismatic PC mogul to being booted out of Apple in 1985, to starting up Next and Pixar to his return to Apple in 1997 as interim CEO (after Apple\u2019s near bankruptcy in 1996) to his reset of Apple to a new trajectory of disruption and triumph. From a distance, Steve Jobs as a product visionary, made it look easy, one innovation after another, the iPod, the iPad, the new Mac and on 1\/9\/2007 Jobs introduced the iPhone as the product that \u201cchanges everything\u201d. He was right. The iPhone soon become the most popular device of our era. While Jobs would pass away in 2011, the iPhone would soon surpass sales of half a billion units catapulting Apple to the rank of most valuable company in the world. Tim Cook was handpicked by Jobs to succeed him. Cook was the mastermind of design and production that turned Steve Jobs\u2019 outside the box imagination into outsized profits for Apple shareholders. <\/p>\n
The manufacturing and technology ecosystem that Apple and China created to deliver hundreds of millions of iPhones annually to the world is a remarkable feat of logistics and training. It required massive investment and the assistance of the Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn to oversee the factories. Quality control came from hundreds of scientists and engineers flown in from Cupertino weekly.<\/p>\n
The book\u2019s subtitle, \u201cThe Capture of the World\u2019s Greatest Company\u201d is the expose\u2019 side of the book. Patrick McGee\u2019s deep research reveals a story shrouded by China\u2019s media censorship, non-disclosure agreements and the shrewd and inscrutable culture of Apple and its host country. It\u2019s a story contrary to the conventional wisdom of China as a benign developing world source of cheap labor. <\/p>\n
In 2013 Xi Jinping became President of China and leader of the CCP. This turned out to be a paradigm shift for China\u2019s relationship with the West and multinational companies. Xi is a determined authoritarian leader comfortable with power and unafraid of using it to further his ambitions for China and its place in the world. Technology leadership is one of those ambitions and Apple was one of Xi\u2019s early targets. By 2013 Apple\u2019s heavy production and lucrative sales inside China made them vulnerable to the pressures of Xi. What developed was a complex and codependent relationship between Apple and China. Apple got availability to hundreds of thousands of trained workers for months at a time at low wages and access to China\u2019s billion plus population hungry for the latest electronic gadgets. For its part China got tens of billions of yearly capital investment along with technical expertise and training. As iPhone sales grew exponentially so did investment and technical assistance from Cupertino. <\/p>\n
In the author\u2019s opinion Apple\u2019s massive capex and tech transfer over 15 plus years was the equivalent of a one company \u2018Marshall Plan\u2019 that ramped up China\u2019s electronics know how and helped them leapfrog much of the developed world in communications and electronics manufacturing. In high end electronics manufacturing China is now a force to reckon with. <\/p>\n
In summary, \u2018Apple In China\u2019 is a consequential book with global implications. Both Apple and China are historic turn around stories. And the nexus between Cupertino and Beijing has been crucial to both of them. Tim Cook\u2019s announcement from the Oval Office on August 7th of Apple\u2019s commitment to invest $100 billion in the U.S. is noteworthy. The irony is rich and the story and drama is far from over. Read the book. <\/p>\n
Ashby Foote III is President of Vector Money Management and serves on the Jackson City Council, Ward 1. He is on the board of Bigger Pie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"My nominee for the best business book of 2025 is \u201cApple In China \u2013 The Capture of the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":164395,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1022,171,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-164394","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115068072794349528","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}