How Apple Built the Chinese Superpower or how much was Steve Jobs involved

This is an interesting hypothesis! It also may cast a new light on the much celebrated co-founder of Apple, the late Steve Jobs. 

Did Steve Jobs make a Faustian Bargain (a deal with the devil) with the Communist Party of China to save Apple? 

Caveat: I did not read the book.

"On the latest episode of China Considered, Senior Fellow Elizabeth Economy speaks with Patrick McGee, Financial Times technology journalist and author of Apple in China, about how Apple’s deep involvement in growing China’s technological manufacturing base inadvertently helped it morph into the industrial powerhouse it is today.
In the book, McGee traces Apple's journey from near-bankruptcy in the late 1990s to becoming deeply dependent on Chinese manufacturing, explaining how Apple didn't just outsource production but actively trained Chinese factories and transferred sophisticated manufacturing knowledge that later benefited homegrown competitors like Huawei and Xiaomi."

Google describes this book as follows: "Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company by Patrick McGee is a 2025 book that details how Apple's deep integration with China's manufacturing and market has created a complex, interdependent relationship with significant geopolitical consequences, arguing that Apple has inadvertently helped China become a tech competitor while becoming vulnerable to Beijing's demands."

Hoover Daily Report | 2025-12-18

Steve Jobs' Wife Fulfills His Kumbh Mela Wish In Prayagraj; Handwritten Letter Sold For ₹4.32 Crore

Very recommendable! Amazing grace!

The Blue Box - One Of Steve Jobs First Products

The Two Steves

Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs supposedly built and sold such a product in the early 1970s (See here & here). “Going door to door in Berkeley dorms, they managed to sell several dozen at $170 each. The "two Steves" savored this mix of clever engineering and entrepreneurial hustle: As Mr. Lapsley quotes Jobs saying: "If we hadn't made blue boxes, there would have been no Apple."”

The Blue Box

The Blue Box was a device used by phreaks (predecessors of hackers) and criminals to circumvent Ma Bell and wire tapping.

Wikipedia: “A blue box is an unauthorized electronic device that generates the same tones employed by a telephone operator's dialing console to switch long-distance calls. The most typical use of a blue box was to place free telephone calls. … Development and use of the blue box was largely enabled by Bell Telephone's policy of publishing all technical documentation regarding its equipment.”

A Blind Kid Whistling At The Perfect Pitch

The critical 2400 Hz telephone system control tone was discovered in approximately 1957, by Josef Carl Engressia, a blind seven-year old boy who became known as Joybubbles. Engressia was skilled with perfect pitch, and discovered that whistling the fourth E above middle C (a frequency of 2600 Hz) would stop a dialed phone recording. Unaware of what he had done, Engressia called the phone company and asked why the recordings had stopped.

As a five-year old, Engressia had already discovered he could dial phone numbers by clicking the hang-up switch (“tapping”).

In his book iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak mentions Joybubbles as an early inspiration during his college years.

The Moral Of The Story

Big Government created a monopoly called AT&T in 1913, which lasted until 1984 or more than 70 years effectively preventing progress in telecommunications and computers. Thus, the people had to put up with inferior technology and higher pricing for a very long time thanks to Big Government. It is an irony of history that the US federal government created this monopoly even before the Soviet Union came into existence.