Apple bows to Chinese censorship – again
WhatsApp, Signal and Threads have been removed from the App Store in China on the orders of the country's internet regulator.
Apple has removed popular apps from its App Store in China – on government orders, and not for the first time.
The apps affected include the encrypted messaging services WhatsApp and Signal, as well as Twitter successor X and Meta’s rival app Threads. Apple confirmed the removals to the Wall Street Journal, citing an instruction from China’s internet regulator.
Apple’s strategic dependency on China runs deep. Outside the United States, no country buys more iPhones. China is also Apple’s most important manufacturing base. Under CEO Tim Cook, Apple wound down its last production in the United States and became wholly dependent on suppliers based in China. During a visit to China a few weeks ago, Cook was quoted by the state-run Global Times saying: “There is no supply chain in the world that is more important to us than China.”
The removal is not Apple’s first capitulation to censorship in the Chinese market. The company has previously pulled numerous apps from its Chinese offering, including various news outlets and VPN services. It also stores Chinese users’ iCloud data exclusively on servers in China, in compliance with local regulations that place access under the control of Chinese authorities.
Under President Xi Jinping, internet control and surveillance have expanded dramatically. Many international online services are accessible in China only via VPN workarounds. WhatsApp and Signal were technically available in the App Store – but their practical use was already significantly disrupted.
The episode illustrates the tension at the heart of Apple’s China strategy: a company that markets privacy as a core value is simultaneously complying with the censorship requirements of a surveillance state – because the business consequences of non-compliance are too large to absorb.
I covered this story for Handelsblatt.