苹果商业帝国之困：当与中国的紧密联系从优势变为负担 - 纽约时报中文网

Every September, Apple unveils its latest phones at its futuristic Silicon Valley campus. A few weeks later, tens of millions of its newest handsets, assembled by legions of seasonal workers hired by its suppliers, are shipped from Chinese factories to customers around the world.

每年9月，苹果都会在其充满未来感的硅谷园区发布新款手机。几周后，由苹果供应商雇佣的大批季节性工人组装的数以千万计的新型号手机，将从中国的工厂运送至世界各地的顾客手中。

The annual release of Apple’s iPhones usually runs like clockwork, a prime example of how the U.S. tech giant has become the most profitable company of the globalization era by seamlessly navigating the world’s two largest economies.

美国科技巨头苹果通过天衣无缝地穿梭于世界两大经济体而成为全球化时代最赚钱的公司，从iPhone每年有条不紊地发布新手机，便能一窥究竟。

But this year, a smooth rollout for the iPhone 14 was the latest casualty of the growing difficulties of doing business in China. Beijing’s no-holds-barred approach to stopping Covid-19 and heightened tensions with the United States has forced Apple to re-examine major aspects of its business.

但今年，在中国做生意越来越困难，难以顺利推出的iPhone 14成了牺牲品。北京为遏制新冠而采取的措施无所不用其极，加上与美国的紧张关系加剧，迫使苹果重新审视其主要业务。

A recent outbreak of coronavirus cases in the region surrounding Apple’s largest iPhone factory, in Zhengzhou, in central China, prompted local officials to order a seven-day lockdown last week. As a result, the company said on Sunday that it would not be able to produce enough phones to meet the demands of the holiday season.

最近，苹果位于中国中部城市郑州的iPhone工厂周边地区暴发疫情，促使当地官员上周下令封锁七天。因此，该公司周日表示，将无法生产足够的手机 来满足假日季的市场需求。

For much of this year, Apple has also been the focus of a bipartisan intervention in Washington, where alarm over Beijing’s military provocations and technology ambitions have upended orthodoxy about free trade.

今年大部分时间，苹果一直是华盛顿两党干预的焦点，对北京的军事挑衅 和科技野心的担忧已经颠覆了关于自由贸易的正统观念。

Word trickled out in March that Apple was in talks with an obscure Chinese memory chip maker, Yangtze Memory Technology Corporation, or YMTC, to supply components for the iPhone 14.

3月有消息称，苹果正在与一家鲜为人知的中国存储芯片制造商长江存储科技公司进行谈判，为iPhone 14提供零部件。

That collided with work being done by a coalition of lawmakers and more than a dozen congressional aides, which had spent months examining the ins and outs of Apple’s supply chain in China. The Commerce Department issued restrictions last month that prohibited American companies from selling machinery to YMTC, making it difficult for Apple to go ahead with the deal.

一个由立法者和十多名国会助手组成的联盟花了几个月的时间研究苹果在中国的供应链，而苹果和长江存储的谈判与联盟的工作背道而驰。商务部上个月发布了限制 举措 ，禁止美国公司向长江存储出售机械设备，这使得苹果难以推进这笔交易。

Apple has confirmed publicly that it talked with YMTC, which didn’t respond to requests for comment. But an Apple spokesman declined to comment when asked if the company had abandoned the possibility of working with the Chinese memory maker.

苹果已经公开证实它与长江存储进行了谈判，后者没有回应置评请求。但当被问及该公司是否已放弃与这家中国内存制造商合作的可能性时，苹果发言人拒绝置评。

The recent developments underscore how Apple’s close ties to China, once considered a strength of its business, have turned into a liability.

最近的事态发展突显了苹果与中国的紧密联系，这种关系曾被视为其业务优势，现在却变成了一种负担。

It is no coincidence that Apple’s rise from near bankruptcy in the 1990s to the world’s most valuable company has closely followed China’s economic ascent. It pioneered a best-of-both-worlds business model: Products designed in California were assembled inexpensively in China and sold to the country’s growing middle class.

苹果公司从1990年代濒临破产到成为世界上最有价值的公司，该过程与中国经济的崛起紧密同步，这绝非巧合。它开创了一种两全其美的商业模式：加州设计的产品在中国以低廉的价格进行组装，然后卖给中国不断壮大的中产阶级。

Apple raked in profits as China’s economy roared. But as U.S.-China relations falter, and both governments meddle in Apple’s business, the company has gone from one of globalization’s greatest success stories to a symbol of its fracture.

随着中国经济的蓬勃发展，苹果公司获得了丰厚的利润。但随着美中关系的恶化，以及两国政府都在干涉苹果的业务，该公司已经从全球化最成功的故事之一变成了全球化出现断裂的象征。

“Apple is discovering that geopolitics drive business models — not the other way around,” said Matthew Turpin, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution specializing in U.S. policy toward China. “This whole collection of supply chain risks are creating a real liability for them.”

“苹果公司发现，地缘政治在驱动商业模式——而不是反过来，”胡佛研究所专门研究美国对华政策的访问学者马修·特平说。“这一系列供应链风险正在给他们带来实实在在的负担。”

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has forced business leaders to reconsider long-held assumptions about operating in the country. For several decades, economic growth was the Chinese government’s top priority. But Mr. Xi used an important Communist Party congress last month to make it clear that security issues and the more ideological viewpoints of the party would take precedence over business concerns.

Mr. Xi’s “zero Covid” policy has slowed factory output and throttled the country’s economic growth , and his government has faced pressure from business leaders and markets to ease the restrictions. But it has not signaled clearly that it will make a change.

习近平的“清零”政策减缓了工厂产出并抑制了该国的经济增长 ，他的政府面临着来自商界领袖和市场的压力，要求放宽限制。但目前尚无明确迹象表明会做出改变。

Loosening Covid restrictions could allow Apple to fill some of its supply shortages and meet some demand, but the company will still lose sales this holiday season, said Jeff Fieldhack, an analyst with Counterpoint Research, a technology research firm.

技术研究公司“康特波因特研究”的分析师杰夫·菲尔德哈克表示，放松对新冠的防控措施可以让苹果填补部分供应短缺，并满足部分需求，但该公司在这个假日季的销售仍将受到影响。

It would be difficult for Apple to untangle itself from China. The company spent two decades working with manufacturing partners to build enormous factories supported by a vast network of suppliers in the country. Over time, it has added more Chinese components to its products and benefited from their lower prices.

苹果很难摆脱与中国的关系。该公司花了20年时间与制造伙伴合作，依靠该国庞大的供应商网络建立了巨大的工厂。随着时间的推移，它在产品中添加了更多来自中国的零部件，并因为低廉的价格受益。

长江存储制造的一种电脑芯片可以降低苹果iPhone的生产成本。 Oriental Image, via Reuters

In a bid to limit its exposure to China, Apple began manufacturing a small percentage of its newest iPhones in India . It shifted production of several other products to Vietnam. But both markets offer factories with only tens of thousands of workers — a fraction of the scale that Apple enjoys in China, where its manufacturing partners employ some three million workers.

为了限制在中国的风险敞口，苹果开始将一小部分新款手机转移到印度生产 。而其他几种产品的生产则转移到了越南。但这两个市场能提供的工厂只有数万名工人——这只是苹果在中国生产规模的零头，它在中国的制造合作伙伴雇佣了大约300万工人。

Apple depends on factories like the iPhone manufacturing plant in Zhengzhou, which is operated by Foxconn, its biggest assembly partner. When Covid-19 cases started to spike in the area, Foxconn walled its roughly 200,000 workers inside the grounds of a factory that can produce as much as 85 percent of iPhones worldwide, according to Counterpoint Research. It wasn’t long before Covid started to spread and Foxconn struggled to balance business demands with the country’s ultra-strict pandemic policy.

苹果依赖像郑州的iPhone制造厂这样的工厂，该厂由其最大的组装合作伙伴富士康运营。康特波因特研究的数据显示，当新冠病例开始在该地区激增时，富士康将约20万名工人隔离在一家工厂的厂区内，该工厂可生产全球85%的iPhone。不久，新冠病毒开始传播，富士康艰难地在业务需求与国家极度严格的疫情政策之间寻求平衡。

As stories of unrest and food shortages flooded Chinese social media, workers began to fear for their lives. Hundreds fled. The assembler initially offered workers an extra $14 a day to continue working. It later nearly quadrupled that amount, to $55 a day.

随着骚乱和食品短缺的消息在中国社交媒体上广为传播，工人们开始担心自己的生命安全。数百人 逃离。装配商最初给工人每天额外的100元，让他们继续工作。后来，这个数字几乎翻了两番，达到每天400元。

When officials ordered the region around the plant into a lockdown, the factory was forced to operate at “significantly reduced capacity,” Apple said on Sunday. It’s unclear when operations will return to full capacity.

苹果公司周日表示，当官员下令封锁工厂周边地区时，工厂被迫“大幅降低产能”。目前还不清楚生产何时能全面恢复。

The production slowdown in Zhengzhou forced Apple to warn investors — for the third time in three years — that sales would be affected by pandemic-related disruptions to its operations in China.

郑州的生产放缓迫使苹果三年来第三次警告投资者，它在中国的业务将受到与疫情有关的干扰，销售将因此受到影响。

While Beijing’s stringent Covid policies are crimping Apple’s iPhone production plans, Washington is watching carefully what goes into its products.

一方面北京严格的新冠政策阻碍了苹果的iPhone生产计划，另一方面华盛顿也正在密切关注进入苹果产品中的零部件。

YMTC, the small Chinese chip maker, was founded in 2016 with a $2.9 billion government investment and a mission to help reduce China’s dependence on foreign chip makers.

中国的小型芯片制造商长江存储成立于2016年，获得了29亿美元的政府投资，其使命是帮助中国减少对外国芯片制造商的依赖。

Apple, which declined to comment, was in talks about a supply agreement with the Chinese firm, according to two people familiar with the discussions. Memory chips, YMTC’s specialty, are one of the iPhone’s most expensive components, accounting for roughly 25 percent of its material costs, according to Susquehanna International Group, a financial firm.

据两位知情人士透露，苹果公司正在与这家中国公司就供应协议进行谈判。苹果公司拒绝置评。据金融公司海纳国际集团称，长江存储的专长——内存芯片是iPhone最贵的部件之一，约占其材料成本的25%。

Because it would offer lower prices to gain market share, YMTC could help Apple pressure its current Western suppliers to lower their costs, said Walter Coon, a semiconductor analyst with Yole Group, a market research firm.

市场研究公司约尔集团的半导体分析师沃尔特·库恩说，由于长江存储以低价换取市场份额，它可以帮助苹果向目前的西方供应商施压，迫使它们降低成本。

But YMTC’s importance to China made it a target of U.S. national security researchers. In late 2020, a team led by James Mulvenon, a Chinese linguist and researcher at the U.S. defense contractor SOS International, issued a 17-page report that detailed YMTC’s connections, through its parent company, Tsinghua Unigroup, to entities that sold products to China’s military.

但长江存储对中国的重要性使其成为美国国家安全研究人员的目标。2020年底，由汉语专家、美国国防承包商SOS国际公司研究员毛文杰(James Mulvenon)领导的团队发布了一份17页的报告，详细介绍了长江存储通过母公司紫光集团与向中国军方出售产品的实体之间的联系。

苹果上周日警告，新一代iPhone 14的生产受到了新冠封锁的影响。 VCG, via Getty Images

In February 2021, Mr. Mulvenon presented his findings to about two dozen Republican and Democratic staff members on Capitol Hill. He outlined the risks that he believed YMTC posed, because its government subsidies could empower it to undercut competitors on price.

2021年2月，毛文杰向国会山的20多名共和党和民主党工作人员提交了他的研究结果。他简要介绍了他认为长江存储带来的风险，因为政府补贴可能使其有能力在价格上低于竞争对手。

“It never made sense to cluster the entire supply chain inside a country that was the most potent cyberthreat to the United States,” Mr. Mulvenon said.

“把整个供应链集中在一个对美国构成最大网络威胁的国家里，这从来就说不通，”毛文杰说。

As Apple geared up for this year’s iPhone release, Wall Street analysts at Credit Suisse issued a report saying that Apple might include YMTC chips in upcoming models. Though Apple and YMTC neither confirmed nor denied the report, the potential deal prompted lawmakers, including Senators Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, and Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida and a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to send letters urging the Biden administration to investigate Apple’s plans .

在苹果为今年的iPhone发布做准备之际，瑞士信贷的华尔街分析师发表了一份报告，称苹果可能会在未来的机型中使用长江存储芯片。尽管苹果和长江存储既没有证实也没有否认这份报告，但潜在的交易促使包括纽约州民主党参议员、参议院多数党领袖查克·舒默和佛罗里达州共和党参议员、参议院情报委员会成员马尔科·卢比奥在内的议员致信拜登政府，敦促他们调查苹果的计划 。

Semiconductor industry officials also raised concerns with lawmakers that Apple had assisted in recruiting engineers from Western companies to help YMTC improve its production, according to three people familiar with the matter.

据三位知情人士透露，半导体行业的官员还向国会议员提出了担忧，称苹果曾协助从西方公司招募工程师，帮助长江存储提高生产。

Apple later sought to reassure lawmakers by telling them that it would use YMTC chips only for iPhones sold in China. But that did not address congressional leaders’ bigger concern that any purchase from YMTC would hurt the market for memory chips.

苹果后来试图安抚议员，告诉他们 ，只会在中国销售的iPhone上使用长江存储芯片。但这并没有解决国会领导人更大的担忧，即从长江存储购买将损害存储芯片市场。

Lawmakers urged Gina Raimondo, the commerce secretary, to put YMTC on the United States’ “entity list,” a designation that would bar it from buying American technology and components without a waiver. On Oct. 7, the department stopped short of that, placing export restrictions on YMTC and 30 companies believed to have ties to China’s military.

议员们敦促商务部长吉娜·雷蒙多将长江存储列入美国的“实体名单”，这将禁止该公司在没有豁免的情况下购买美国的技术和零部件。但在10月7日，美国商务部并没有这样做，而是对长江存储和30家据信与中国军方有关联的公司实施了出口限制 。

The new restrictions cost YMTC access to critical American machinery for a new factory in Wuhan and may limit its ability to work with a company like Apple.

新的限制措施使长江存储无法为武汉的一家新工厂获取关键的美国机器，并可能限制它与苹果等公司合作的能力。

In the days after the restrictions were issued, the Japanese business outlet Nikkei published a report saying Apple had dropped its plans to use YMTC. When asked if the Nikkei report was accurate, an Apple spokesman declined to comment.

在禁令发布后的几天里，日本商业媒体《日经新闻》发表报道，称苹果放弃了使用长江存储的计划 。当被问及《日经新闻》的报道是否准确时，苹果发言人拒绝置评。

Lawmakers continue to pressure Apple and YMTC. In a statement to The New York Times, Mr. Rubio said, referring to Apple’s chief executive: “If Tim Cook understands the risks that YMTC and the rest of the Chinese Communist Party’s chip-making efforts pose to U.S. national security and that of our allies, then he and his company should clearly commit not to proceed.”

立法者继续向苹果和长江存储施压。卢比奥在给《纽约时报》的一份声明中提到苹果首席执行官时表示：“如果蒂姆·库克明白，长江存储和中共的其他芯片制造活动对美国和我们盟友的国家安全构成风险，那么他和他的公司就应该明确承诺，不再继续推进此事。”再继续推进此事。”