Free speech, privacy and access to a free press are part of the legal and constitutional/meta-legal framework for many democratic systems of government. In principle and in practice. There are laws in the US guaranteeing these freedoms, and hundreds of years of common law supporting and interpreting them.
Subverting those freedoms in the US, is subverting the US' system of government, and ilegal. There are (as they demonstrated) legal channels to defending their users' rights within the US' legal framework because they exist in the US' legal system.
There are philosphical elements to this, universal & inalienable rights and freedoms. But, these are philosophical. In the US, Apple acted at the legal level, with a legal argument not a philosophical one.
China is not a democracy. These rights are not a part of their system of government and there is no legal way to defend rights that are not recognized in that country. This is not some postmodernist or nihilist relativism. It's just recognizing that different laws and rights exist in different countries.
I'm not sure what you expect from Apple. They could pull out of China altogether, on the grounds that China's laws are too immoral. They could try to promote their idea of what a government should be and what rights citizens should have. This amounts to calling for a revolution.
I don't think this is a reasonable expectation of a company. I don't think it will lead to a good place either. Apple are a computer company, not a revolutionary movement (1984 ad notwithstanding). The revolutionaries need to be (or not to be) Chinese citizens, not foreign companies.
Free speech, privacy and access to a free press are part of the legal and constitutional/meta-legal framework for many democratic systems of government. In principle and in practice. There are laws in the US guaranteeing these freedoms, and hundreds of years of common law supporting and interpreting them.
Subverting those freedoms in the US, is subverting the US' system of government, and ilegal. There are (as they demonstrated) legal channels to defending their users' rights within the US' legal framework because they exist in the US' legal system.
There are philosphical elements to this, universal & inalienable rights and freedoms. But, these are philosophical. In the US, Apple acted at the legal level, with a legal argument not a philosophical one.
China is not a democracy. These rights are not a part of their system of government and there is no legal way to defend rights that are not recognized in that country. This is not some postmodernist or nihilist relativism. It's just recognizing that different laws and rights exist in different countries.
I'm not sure what you expect from Apple. They could pull out of China altogether, on the grounds that China's laws are too immoral. They could try to promote their idea of what a government should be and what rights citizens should have. This amounts to calling for a revolution.
I don't think this is a reasonable expectation of a company. I don't think it will lead to a good place either. Apple are a computer company, not a revolutionary movement (1984 ad notwithstanding). The revolutionaries need to be (or not to be) Chinese citizens, not foreign companies.