PATRICK McGEE2026年4月24日 Manuel Orbegozo/ReutersTim Cook is ending his illustrious stint as chief executive of Apple. The soft-spoken operator accomplished the near impossible, filling the shoes of the visionary co-founder Steve Jobs, turning the iPhone from a cultural phenomenon into a financial juggernaut and transforming his company into a $4 trillion goliath — growing its market value by $682 million per day, on average, for 15 years. By the metrics investors care about, Mr. Cook is nothing short of a rock star.蒂姆·库克即将结束他在苹果公司担任首席执行官的辉煌任期。这位言辞温和的经营者完成了近乎不可能的任务，接过富有远见的联合创始人史蒂夫·乔布斯的衣钵，将iPhone从一种文化现象转变为金融巨擘，并将公司打造成市值4万亿美元的庞然大物——15年来，苹果的市值平均每天增长6.82亿美元。就投资者关心的指标而言，库克无疑是一位摇滚巨星。But when one considers his role in the sweep of American history, his legacy grows more complicated, for much of Apple’s success is due to his move to consolidate virtually all of his company’s manufacturing in China.但如果从美国历史的长河来看，他的遗产就变得复杂得多，因为苹果的成功在很大程度上归功于他将公司几乎所有的制造业务都整合到了中国。The results have been profound. Apple under Mr. Cook played a significant role in the rise of China’s middle class, and produced the iPhone in enormous quantities at a low enough cost that roughly half of all Americans own one. His choices also dramatically escalated China’s economic standing and technological prowess to the point that its increasingly authoritarian leaders now see themselves as powerful rivals to the U.S.其结果是深远的。在库克的领导下，苹果在中国中产阶级的崛起中发挥了重要作用，并以足够低的价格大规模生产iPhone，使得大约一半的美国人都拥有一部。他的选择也显著提升了中国的经济地位和技术实力，以至于其日益威权的领导层现在将自己视为美国的强力竞争对手。If President Xi Jinping’s imperialist instincts fade, Mr. Cook will be remembered for helping bring capitalism and liberalism to one of the most populous countries in the world. If the tensions between China and the United States continue to escalate, especially if Beijing makes good on its threats to attack the island of Taiwan — a democracy that happens to produce the vast majority of the world’s semiconductor chips — Mr. Cook will be remembered differently. He will be the man who not only squandered his company’s future (as it is still highly dependent on China), but also handed the West’s technological prowess to its biggest threat.如果习近平主席的帝国主义本能消退，库克将因帮助资本主义和自由主义带入这个世界上人口最多的国家之一而被铭记。但如果中美紧张局势持续升级，特别是如果北京兑现其攻击台湾的威胁——这个民主政体恰好生产了世界上绝大多数的半导体芯片，库克的名声将截然不同。他将被视为不仅葬送了公司前途（因为苹果仍高度依赖中国），而且将西方的技术优势拱手让给了西方的最大威胁。History can be a brutal editor. Consider Jack Welch, the long-lionized chief executive of General Electric. In his two-decade reign, which ended in 2001, Mr. Welch earned shareholders an astonishing 21 percent annual return — just a nudge less than Mr. Cook’s — and was anointed “manager of the century” by Fortune magazine. His moves into financial engineering were the stuff of Wall Street legend — until the financial crisis exposed the company as hollowed out and recklessly overleveraged. By 2009, G.E. was begging for government-backed infusions of cash; its stock price had plummeted 85 percent. In 2022, author David Gelles recast Mr. Welch as “the man who broke capitalism.”历史可能是一位残酷的评选者。想想通用电气长期备受推崇的首席执行官杰克·韦尔奇。在他截至2001年的20年任期内，韦尔奇为股东赚取了惊人的21%年化回报率——仅比库克略低一点——并被《财富》杂志誉为“世纪经理人”。他在金融工程方面的举措曾是华尔街的传奇，直到金融危机暴露了这家公司已经空心化且杠杆过高、风险巨大。到2009年，通用电气不得不乞求政府注资；其股价暴跌了85%。2022年，作家戴维·盖尔斯将韦尔奇重新定义为“毁掉资本主义的人”。Mr. Cook started at Apple as a senior vice president of operations in 1998 and quickly overhauled Apple’s manufacturing strategy to rely on inexpensive labor overseas. By owning the process rather than owning the factories, Apple could retain control over production while offloading the manufacturing risks to suppliers. Mr. Cook also wrested royalties from app makers and moved into media streaming and advertising, all part of a “services” push that was twice as profitable as the hardware Apple sold.库克于1998年加入苹果担任运营高级副总裁，并迅速改革了苹果的制造战略，转而依靠海外廉价劳动力。通过掌控生产流程而非拥有工厂，苹果在保持生产控制权的同时，将制造风险转嫁给了供应商。库克还向应用开发商征收版税，并进军流媒体和广告业务，这一切都是“服务”战略的一部分，其利润率是苹果硬件销售额的两倍。Year after year, Mr. Cook removed microrisks from Apple’s business and made its financials smoother and more predictable. But at the same time, he proved blind to a macrorisk, moving the vast bulk of Apple’s operations to China just as the authoritarian country was turning into America’s fiercest adversary.年复一年，库克排除了苹果业务中的微观风险，使其财务表现更加平稳且可预测。但与此同时，他却对宏观风险视而不见，就在中国这个威权国家转变为美国最激烈的对手之际，他将苹果绝大部分的业务转移到了那里。Based on my research, I am convinced that no company has done more to enable President Xi. Since 2008, Apple has worked with suppliers to train 30 million workers, principally in China. It has invested hundreds of billions of dollars in the mainland and facilitated an epic transfer of practical knowledge in how to make things to hundreds of Chinese factories. I wrote in my book that at two points, Apple’s Cupertino, Calif., headquarters was sending so many engineers to orchestrate production that it convinced United Airlines to fly thrice weekly from San Francisco to Chengdu and Hangzhou, arguing it would buy so many first-class seats that the route would be profitable even if the rest of the plane were empty.根据我的研究，我确信没有哪家公司比苹果为习近平提供的助力更多。自2008年以来，苹果与供应商合作培训了3000万名工人，主要是在中国。它在大陆投资了数千亿美元，并促进了一场关于制造工艺的史诗级制造实践知识转移，惠及了数百家中国工厂。我在书中写道，有两次，苹果位于加州库比蒂诺的总部派出极多的工程师去协调生产，以至于它说服美联航开通每周三班从旧金山飞往成都和杭州的航班，理由是苹果购买的头等舱座位足以让这条航线在飞机其余座位全空的情况下也能盈利。The price of doing business in China was turning a blind eye to its increasingly authoritarian impulses. Apple has removed tens of thousands of apps from its Chinese App Store at Beijing’s direction. It moved mainland Chinese users’ iCloud data to servers operated by a state-owned company, likely exposing their personal data to the government. (Apple says it’s adhering to China’s laws.)在中国开展业务的代价是对该国日益增长的威权冲动视而不见。苹果根据北京的指示，从中国的应用商店下架了数万个应用。它将中国大陆用户的iCloud数据迁移到一家国有企业运营的服务器上，这可能将个人数据暴露给政府。（苹果称其遵守中国法律。）Mr. Cook has spoken out in favor of voting rights, the environment, gun control and L.G.B.T.Q. protections, but he has been conspicuously silent on China’s subjugation of Hong Kong protesters, the persecution of Uyghurs in Xinjiang or the 20-year sentence of the pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai. Most revealing of all, since taking over as Apple’s C.E.O., he has not set foot in Taiwan — a thriving democracy, but a rogue province from Beijing’s perspective. That the chief of the world’s most iconic technology company won’t visit its most important chip suppliers is telling.库克曾公开支持投票权、环境保护、枪支管制和LGBTQ权益，但对于中国镇压香港抗议者、迫害新疆维吾尔人，以及判处亲民主媒体大亨黎智英20年监禁等事件，他一直保持引人注目的沉默。最能说明问题的是，自担任苹果CEO以来，他从未踏足台湾——一个充满活力的民主政体，但在北京看来却是一个叛乱省份。作为全球最具标志性的科技公司掌门人，却不愿访问其最重要的芯片供应商所在地，这本身就很说明问题。Apple is hardly alone in this. Many American companies, in their scramble for lower prices, have effectively given away swaths of their practical know-how, machinery, processes and talent to China. They gave President Xi the resources he needed to attain dominance in fields as disparate as rare-earth magnets, solar wafers, steel and pharmaceuticals. The billions China is pouring into building electric cars alone could leave Detroit in the dust.苹果并非个例。许多美国公司为了追求更低的价格，实际上已经将大量的实用技术、机械设备、工艺流程和人才拱手让给了中国。它们为习近平提供了所需资源，帮助中国在稀土磁铁、太阳能硅片、钢铁和制药等迥异领域取得主导地位。仅中国投入于电动汽车领域的数十亿美元，就可能让底特律望尘莫及。China is building far more than the country needs or that importers want. When Western economists criticize the resulting oversupply as inefficient, they’re missing the point. China’s goal isn’t to provide a return to shareholders. It is to control the world by commanding its material production. As economist Noah Smith observed, “profit is not the goal of war.”中国的产能远超国内需求或进口商所需。当西方经济学家批评这种过度供应的低效时，他们其实没抓住重点。中国的目标不是为股东提供回报，而是通过掌握全球物质生产来控制世界。正如经济学家诺亚·史密斯所观察到的：“利润不是战争的目标。”Despite the Biden and Trump administrations’ efforts to slow the country’s momentum, China’s share of global industrial production is expected to rise to 45 percent by 2030, up from about 30 percent in 2025. And Beijing just implemented new rules to punish foreign companies taking action to divest from China.尽管拜登和特朗普政府努力减缓中国的这种势头，但到2030年，中国在全球工业生产中的份额预计将从2025年的约30%上升到45%。而且北京刚刚实施了新规定，对采取措施撤资中国的外国企业予以惩罚。Apple, for its part, has made tentative moves to expand iPhone assembly to India, but the bulk of its supply chain is still deeply rooted in China.就苹果而言，虽然已经初步尝试将iPhone组装扩展到印度，但其供应链的主体依然深植于中国。John Ternus, Mr. Cook’s successor, is relatively young, capable and ambitious. There’s reason to hope he can rethink and unlearn some of Mr. Cook’s core assumptions. But Mr. Cook isn’t retiring; he’s stepping up to executive chairman. And Mr. Ternus may not be able to chart a new course if the architect of the current strategy sits above him.库克的继任者约翰·特纳斯相对年轻、能干且有抱负。我们有理由希望他能重新思考并摒弃库克的一些核心假设。但库克并未退休，而是转任执行董事长。如果当前战略的架构师依然高居其上，特纳斯未必能开辟出新的航向。Of course, no businessman can ever truly know the historical consequences of his actions. The Cambridge historian Christopher Clark argued that the catastrophe that was the First World War resulted from the aggregation of rational, defensible decisions made by statesmen in a complex world. Mr. Cook’s decision to consolidate Apple’s operations into China fits that mold: Every decision to deepen his footprint in the country made sense at the time.当然，没有哪个商人能真正预知其行为的历史后果。剑桥大学历史学家克里斯托弗·克拉克认为，第一次世界大战的惨剧是政治人士们在复杂世界中做出的一系列理性且合理的决策叠加的结果。库克将苹果业务向中国集中的决策也符合这种模式：当时每一步加深在华业务布局的决定，在当时看来都是合理的。Those decisions also made Apple and its investors enormous sums of money. But stock prices don’t reflect the costs to our economy and our own gutted industries.这些决定确实为苹果及其投资者赚取了巨额财富。但股票价格并不能反映这些决策给我们的经济，以及我们那些被掏空的产业所带来的代价。Patrick McGee为《金融时报》报道苹果公司六年。他也是《苹果在中国》一书的作者。他现在是《金融时报》特稿作者，也是Free Press的专栏作者。翻译：纽约时报中文网点击查看本文英文版。