Apple’s Ex-CEO May Not Be America’s Blessing

In the past two days, China’s Internet and other media are all mourning for the death of Steve Jobs, and the degree of painfulness seems to have surpassed American media. There’s no doubt that Jobs is an extremely intelligent person: He invented practical products when he was young and he brought addictive entertainment products to the world before his death. Because in Chinese tradition, the deceased should be respected, if I have some inharmonious voice, people may accuse me of being disrespectful to the great person, especially those fans of Apple. It’s better for me to keep silence, not saying anything different. However, at the moment of Chinese people’s condolence for Jobs, we may do something wrong, which is a directional mistake. I need to clear things up while people are concerned about this.

The problem starts in a Microblog written by “Wuhan road,” who wrote that Jobs’ personal success was a good footnote to America’s downturn. The market value of Apple exceeded Rockefeller’s Mobil, and its cash flow was more than that of the U.S. government, which didn’t indicate industrial upgrade and social vitality, instead, America’s decadence and abyss of consumerism were shown. At the moment of people taking over Wall Street, the ex-CEO of the company with the largest market value died at the right time, what could he see if he lived for another 20 years?

Those words probably would irritate a lot of people, and I need to explain something here. Kevin Kelly’s Out of Control is a well-known book, which has influenced Jobs deeply. This book cited Harvard Business Review that Apple’s microprocessor was bought from Synertek, and other chips were from Hitachi, Texas Instrument and Motorola, and the monitor was from Hitachi and the charger was from Aspen Tektronix, and the printer was from Tokyo Electron, etc. In the same way, through outsourcing its application software to Microsoft, its market promotion to McKenna Consultants, its product design to Frog Design, its distribution to ITT Industrial Group and ComputerLand, Apple has decreased its internal transactional service and capital input to the minimum.

Out of Control was written 20 years ago, but the situation has changed recently. For example, Apple has relied to a large extent on Foxconn, but that description was still true mostly. We must admit that Jobs is a very smart person and Apple is very successful, but such a phenomenon in a country has a fundamental problem. When IBM was at the summit of its power, Apple’s rise was icing on the cake for the country, but when the market values of Apple and Microsoft have exceeded that of IBM, it’s not no longer good for the country, instead, it’s the sign of a country’s depression. The reasoning is simple: if basic developers are decreased and the amount of money available decreases, how can creative ideas be realized?

Some people say that no figure like Jobs is in China is because of its rigid system, that China’s education has cut the throat of creativity. Wrong! The real reason why China has no Jobs is that China has no IBM, China’s military expenses are less than America’s. Therefore, our potential Jobs or Gates does not have the opportunity to play with those things, so they didn’t grow into them. Then why doesn’t China have an IBM and why are its military expenses “small”? That’s because in the past years, China’s steel production was much less than that of America. Today, China’s crude steel production is 8 times that of America’s. It’s only a matter of time before the next Jobs and Gates appear in China after we have our own IBM and NASA, as long as we are not fooled by Apple’s legend and remain grounded.

Some commentators joked that Jobs’ greatness lied in the fact that he provided a relaxing, good-for-all-ages “toy” in a people-enslaved-by-money society. However, the toy is upgrading too fast under the push of money, so Jobs dared not to see the end of it and passed away. Perhaps it’s not that terrible in the U.S., because IBM recovered to some extent though it cannot catch up with Apple, but it has finally exceeded Microsoft. In January 2000, IBM’s market value was only one-third of Microsoft’s. Good luck to America, however, the downturn is inevitable. Jobs said that death was the best invention of life; the new can’t come if the old doesn’t go. From a historical view, this is not only true of a person, but also of a country.