Apple’s China iCloud operator warns of ‘dire’ Covid lockdown

A file photo of a Chinese woman using an iPhone outside an Apple store in Beijing. Since its unveiling in 2017, Apple’s Chinese data centre has become the heart of its nationwide operation, storing and handling an array of information from photos and videos to email. — AFP

China’s latest Covid lockdown has virtually paralysed a city of six million that houses much of the country’s electronic information, forcing Apple Inc’s data centre operator to take emergency measures to shut out the pandemic.

Apple’s partner in Guiyang, which operates the server centre that houses all online data generated and stored by hundreds of millions of Chinese iPhone users, described what amounted to a “closed loop” system under which employees are barred from leaving the premises. Many haven’t seen their families for a week, Guizhou Cloud Big Data, Apple’s government-backed partner, said in a WeChat notice.