The Chinese are afraid of their iPhones. Panic on the Internet. “I bought Redmi to avoid problems”

At the beginning of September, and even bringing your own smartphones with a bitten apple on the casing to work. Later, the ban was to be extended to local authorities – including: , but it turns out that the ban hit ordinary Chinese people the hardest.

The Chinese are afraid of their iPhones. Even if they don’t work for the government

That News of the ban caused panic on the Chinese internet. The Chinese are sharing information on this subject and are afraid that more companies, including private ones, will start to share the anti-Western point of view central authorities. Employees suspect that their bosses may come up with the idea of ​​banning the use of iPhones at work or even bringing them to the office. Others fear that they may follow suit and ban the use of other Apple devices – e.g. MacBooks.

There are voices of dissatisfied employees on the Chinese social networking site Weibo, who claim that their employers have already banned the use of iPhones. “Employers don’t allow Apple, so I bought Redmi to avoid problems,” BI quotes one of them as saying. Another laments that he waited in line all weekend for a new iPhone, and now his employer won’t let him use it in the office. However, it is not clear which Internet users work in state-owned companies (which, according to reports, are subject to the ban) and which work in private enterprises. Beijing has still not directly confirmed whether such a ban has been issued at all and – if so – how wide a group of people it may cover. Media estimates say about 56.33 million people, because this is the number of workers employed by the local and central authorities of China and state-owned enterprises in this country.

However, as the Japanese recently wrote, the trend of gradually abandoning computers and smartphones from abroad is expected to continue in the Chinese government for many years. One official working for the central government in Beijing said that many government workers have long owned two smartphones – a Huawei for work purposes and an iPhone for personal use.

China responds evasively. USA straight: Attempted retaliation

China initially did not comment on the ban at all, neither confirming nor denying whether it had issued it at all. Beijing spoke for the first time on Wednesday, explaining that it had detected “security concerns” in Apple devices. Mao Ning, spokeswoman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, evasively stated that “no legal, regulatory or policy document” has been issued to prohibit the purchase and use of foreign smartphones – . Ning, however, did not say anything about whether any ban had been issued to government officials.

in turn, that the US National Security Council is “watching the situation with concern.” The White House – which also spoke on the matter for the first time – said it considered China’s actions to be an “attempt to retaliate against the United States.” As a reminder, the Americans had previously imposed sanctions on some Chinese companies (primarily Huawei), preventing them from cooperating with US companies. There are also debates overseas about the possible blocking of the Chinese application TikTok (so far it has only been banned in Montana).