In another fracturing of the global internet, Apple has complied with orders from Beijing to remove WhatsApp and the new Threads app from its App Store in mainland China. The takedowns, which the tech giant said resulted from national security concerns cited by Chinese censors, further isolate the country’s digital ecosystem from Western services and escalate tensions over data sovereignty.
“We are obligated to follow the laws in the countries where we operate, even when we disagree,” an Apple spokesperson told CNN on Friday. “The Cyberspace Administration of China ordered the removal of these apps from the China storefront based on their national security concerns. These apps remain available for download on all other storefronts where they appear.”
The apps in question, both owned by Meta, were already effectively blocked in China by the government’s Great Firewall and saw little actual adoption. However, their formal ejection from Apple’s tightly controlled local App Store underscores the widening technology divide between the world’s two largest economies and rivals.
“It will cause inconvenience to consumers and businesses in China who deal with family, friends or customers overseas,” said Duncan Clark, chairman of Beijing-based advisory BDA China. “Even if they use VPNs to access their existing WhatsApp apps, these over time will become obsolete and require updating.”
Virtual private networks, which can circumvent China’s censorship regime by encrypting internet traffic, offer only a temporary workaround. As Clark notes, any apps requiring security updates or new functionality will eventually become unusable in the country without App Store distribution.
Other Western social media giants like X (the platform formerly known as Twitter), Facebook, Instagram and Messenger still have an App Store presence for now. But the WhatsApp and Threads bans underscore how Beijing’s vision of a digital sphere cordoned off from foreign influence and services is steadily advancing.
The implications extend far beyond Chinese consumers denied access to the latest viral text-based app. For Apple, which has poured billions into cultivating the region as a production base and major market, the escalating crackdown threatens its future in one of the world’s most lucrative economies.
iPhone sales in China tumbled a staggering 10% in the first quarter of 2023 as economic headwinds and resurgent domestic Android brands like Huawei and Xiaomi eroded Apple’s standing. The Cupertino tech titan has already resorted to rare discounting to prop up demand from patriotic Chinese consumers increasingly favoring local heroes over the American incumbent.
Apple CEO Tim Cook visited Shanghai just last month in a perception-shaping trip to open the company’s second largest retail store worldwide in the country. But the WhatsApp shutdown threatens to further sour the growing digital nationalism brewing against Western platforms and technology ecosystems.
While Apple has frequently complied with Beijing’s speech restrictions and data localization demands in the past, the WhatsApp case marks a new front in the tug-of-war over internet sovereignty. By stripping even encrypted messaging tools from the App Store, regulators have directly impeded functionality at the core of the iPhone’s user experience.
For hundreds of millions of Chinese users, that could render the premium Apple smartphone experience increasingly fractured compared to the seamless global services available on Android rivals. If the App Store’s international selection continues withering, it may only accelerate the migration to competitive devices offering unfettered access to WeChat, Weibo and China’s relatively open mobile internet.
Yet even as Chinese players like Huawei celebrated major 5G contracts in Europe and cloud infrastructure partnerships in Asia in recent months, international tensions around technology have continued intensifying. Western capitals have grown increasingly hawkish on decoupling from Chinese supply chains for everything from semiconductors and telecommunications to artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles.
The battle lines over dominance in the industries powering the modern digital economy are only hardening. The Trump administration’s efforts to sever Chinese giants like Huawei and TikTok from American networks and consumers previewed the balkanization now accelerating across multiple theaters.
In this context, Apple’s accommodations to Chinese censors appear increasingly pragmatic if self-defeating over the long run. With Washington viewing Beijing as both a strategic competitor and potential existential threat, protecting core Silicon Valley assets has become a matter of national security policy.
While WhatsApp may have been initially targeted by the Cyberspace Administration for standard suppression of encrypted communications, the wider implications are clear: Beijing aims to steadily excise U.S. technology overcies from its digital boundaries – a goal America’s new Western aligned industrial policy seeks to counter.
As the world’s internet fractures between sovereign, ideologically incompatible spheres of influence, multinational corporations like Apple find themselves increasingly caught in the crossfire. One by one, the compromises and concessions required to sustain business in each camp may render the very concept of a unified global marketplace antiquated. In that divisive new reality, companies like Apple ultimately may be forced to choose a side.