Apple's been 'aiding Chinese censorship' in hundreds of ways to the tune of billions of dollars for well over a decade and you were ok with it all until they took VPN's off the app store? Lol.
"We're" already in trouble. Just like HN commenters wisely advise not to build your company on top of someone else's service, the entire planet has built their service on China's manufacturing. The thinking (if there even was any, I personally doubt it) was that we'd just use them for labor intensive but low intellectual assembly work, but it seems no one considered if China was happy to continue being the servant of the West indefinitely.
China seems like a country happy to play the long game, but I don't think they're even going to have to.
Amazon's Cloud services aren't made in China - it's the Chinese market they want, not Chinese factories. China depends on foreign markets for its factories output, but generally isn't as keen on having its (huge) market buying foreign goods and services. Having saturated their other markets, Western companies are desperate to tap into China to keep their growth numbers.
> Western companies are desperate to tap into China to keep their growth numbers
Yes they are, and China isn't stupid enough to allow that, and there's nothing the west can do about it without sinking the ship they are in. With the west being a democracy with most major decisions being made by individual corporations, to me it looks like a near certain checkmate for China, provided they don't have something like a major financial crisis.
