Apple’s balancing act in China gets trickier during Xi’s crackdown

China's continued crackdown on tech companies now puts Apple in its crosshairs, despite the American tech giant's continues efforts to appease regulators. — AFP

In less than a year, China has upended the world’s largest internet sphere, throwing its biggest players from Alibaba to Tencent into a tailspin with a storm of regulatory measures to loosen their stranglehold over data and content. Yet Apple Inc., the largest of them all and an American icon, has sailed through mostly unscathed.

That may be changing. President Xi Jinping has over the past year launched a broad offensive against Big Tech, directing the dismantling of digital walls around platforms like WeChat that stifle competition.

Last month, China’s top court effectively granted consumers the right to sue Apple for alleged abuse of market power – a setback for a company whose App Store pioneered the walled-garden model of centralising user data and publishing control.