IERI (Yesterday) Tim Cook and many other important presidents of US companies met with the president of China, Xi Jinping, this being on an official state visit to the American territory, simultaneously with Pope Francis.
President Obama threatened to apply import sanctions against Chinese products because of the numerous computer attacks initiated by the Chinese government, but also because of the numerous problems of intellectual theft in the country, so Xi Jinping now met with the presidents of the affected companies.
In the image above you can see that Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, and Meg Whitman, the CEO of HP, are sitting next to the Chinese president, while Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg are placed towards the edge of the picture, the CEO Facebook being the most marginalized.
According to recent reports, Chinese companies earn up to 300 billion dollars annually from intellectual theft, mainly hacking the computer systems of American companies, but also copying the design or functionality of some products.
Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to the US starts Tuesday with meetings with tech executives in Seattle rather than government officials in Washington, but politics will still be front and center. Mr. Xi's goal, say several experts on US and China relations, will be to cajole American tech chief executives into helping him persuade the Obama administration not to retaliate against China for years of alleged hacking and theft...
Chinese President Xi Jinping allegedly stated during the visit that the Chinese market is too important for the US for imports from it to be blocked and that most American companies rely on those in China for the production of various electronic products, so the proposed sanctions have little chance to be imposed.
For Apple, China has become one of the most important markets, and sanctions imposed by the American government will do nothing but block the production and sales of iDevices, the same being true for many other companies, so this visit is only a the new opportunity for various leaders to socialize.
