My worry is that the definition of "Chinese users" will be expanded. Right now the assumption is that it's for Chinese citizens, but of course, anyone who registered an account while in China is also thrown in that pile. I have to wonder if this will someday include Chinese citizens who've been living abroad and created accounts while outside of China, people with former Chinese citizenship who've taken another country's citizenship, their children, and so on.

Wechat's surveillance is pushing the idea of what should be monitored by China. It's a real possibility that this will expand into foreign companies with operations in China.

> people with former Chinese citizenship who've taken another country's citizenship, their children, and so on.

How the CPP doesn't accept peopel giving up Chinese citizenship and how it affects children of affected people is a known problem.

That seems like a valid worry, however, it would be cause for such enormous outrage that I think it’s a route Beijing will never take. Tiktok is a good microcosm of this, it’s already stirring outrage and it’s not even monitoring more than any other surveillanceware (Facebook, Instagram, etc).

China trying to exert its pressures on Chinese citizens abroad has already been happening to not that much outrage in Australia[1] and the United States.[2]

[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-31/chinese-government-ac... [2]https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/university-of-min...

I don't know if this distinction is that important. If someone from the US imessages or emails someone holding an Apple account in China, then their data will also be revealed.

That’s not true — my iCloud data is not transferred to China because I email a Chinese iCloud user. That message will be revealed, but that is very different from “their data will also be revealed.”

Chinese users are no less users than other users, and speaks volumes about the companies cooperating with the CCP.

So... punish the Chinese people for having an oppressive government by not providing them with the top of the line? It seems more unjust to me. There is no good choice here, only bad and worse — I think Apples presence in China is the lesser of two evils. Same with Google etc.