Tech giant Apple has more than doubled its donation to China’s efforts to fight the coronavirus, giving approximately $7 million just weeks after opening its 42 stores in the country while closing all other stores around the globe.
Reuters reports that tech giant Apple has more than doubled its donations to China’s efforts to fight the coronavirus giving 50 million yuan ($7 million) to the country. Apple CEO Tim Cook posted about the donation on Chinese social media app Weibo just a few weeks after the company re-opened all 42 of its stores in China, shortly before closing all other stores around the world.
Apple has already given around 20 million yuan of its promised donation amount to the Beijing-based China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation to support six hospitals in Hubei including a makeshift hospital set up in Leishenshan in Wuhan. “China has shown incredible spirit and resilience during the COVID-19 outbreak and we are grateful to our teams, partners and customers for their support during these challenging times,” Cook said in his post on Weibo.
Breitbart News reported last month that in a post to the Apple Newsroom tech giant Apple announced that it would be closing all stores outside of China shortly after reopening all of its stores in the country. In a post to the Newsroom, Apple stated:
First, I want to recognize Apple’s family in Greater China. Though the rate of infections has dramatically declined, we know COVID-19’s effects are still being strongly felt. I want to express my deep gratitude to our team in China for their determination and spirit. As of today, all of our stores in Greater China have reopened. I also want to thank our operations team and partners for their remarkable efforts to restore our supply chain. What we’ve learned together has helped us all develop the best practices that are assisting enormously in our global response.
One of those lessons is that the most effective way to minimize risk of the virus’s transmission is to reduce density and maximize social distance. As rates of new infections continue to grow in other places, we’re taking additional steps to protect our team members and customers.
We will be closing all of our retail stores outside of Greater China until March 27. We are committed to providing exceptional service to our customers. Our online stores are open at www.apple.com, or you can download the Apple Store app on the App Store. For service and support, customers can visit support.apple.com. I want to thank our extraordinary Retail teams for their dedication to enriching our customers’ lives. We are all so grateful to you.
Some have criticized the move by Apple to close all non-China locations, such as Hayman Chief Investment Officers Kyle Bass who stated that Apple CEO Tim Cook has “sold his soul to the evil of the Chinese communist party.” Bass’ tweet can be seen below:
“Outside of greater china”?! @tim_cook has sold his soul to the evil of the chinese communist party. Brilliant for marketing to the 1.4 billion but despicable for encouraging and participating in massive human rights violations . #applenews #Apple #HumanRightsViolations #sellout https://t.co/7T1tEslHgp
— 😷Kyle Bass😷 (@Jkylebass) March 14, 2020
Breitbart News also reported in March that Apple had reopened its stores in China after shutting them down last month following the outbreak of Wuhan coronavirus. The company has since been gradually reopening them and the final stores resumed normal business on Friday.
The closure of the stores factored into Apple’s announcement last month that the coronavirus would have an impact on its quarterly revenue. Apple CEO Tim Cook stated at the time that he was confident that China was getting the outbreak under control.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
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