Chinese media’s anti-Apple onslaught continues

Trouble is brewing in Apple’s second largest market — and it’s not a quiet affair.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Chinese government’s traditional mouthpiece, The People’s Daily, ran a front page article criticising the tech giant’s response to a recent broadcast by China’s official state-run TV network. In it, the newspaper said Apple refused to grant its journalists interviews and instead simply offered “empty and self-praising” responses to the complaints raised.

The broadcast, which was spotted by Tech in Asia at the time, aired on World Consumer Rights Day and accused Apple of unfair customer service practices. In the documentary, the national CCTV network said that Apple treats its Chinese customers differently from those in other countries, offering, for example, to replace defective devices with new ones while in China simply fixing the old back cover on the otherwise new phone and returning it to the customer. The investigation also suggested Apple violates Chinese laws regarding the required length of warranties.

It’s a fact that Apple has denied on the Chinese version of its website, issuing a statement to confirm it is the company’s policy to “fully comply with the local laws and regulations” and that warrantee practices around the world are roughly the same, although “specific practices in some maintenance of way will be adjusted according to China’s laws and regulations, such as the maintenance refurbished or remanufactured parts.” After the US, China is Apple’s largest market — its most recent financial statements report that sales in greater China in the last quarter accounted for some US$6.83 billion — a 67 percent increase over a year previously.

The article and broadcast come after a report released by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology suggested the country was too reliant on foreign operating systems. It particularly singled out Google’s Android, saying that China has the potential to develop its own operating systems, but the “country’s mobile operating system research and development is too dependent on Android.” The government has also recently taken to urging local companies to compete on a global scale and aspire to sales of more than US$16.1-billion by 2015.