Apple CEO Tim Cook made Chairman of Tsinghua University SEM in China

Apple CEO Tim Cook has been appointed as the chairman of the advisory board for Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management (SEM) in Beijing. Cook will hold the role for the next three years as suggested by University's board meeting summary for October 18 which notes that Cook himself was present at the meeting where his appointment was confirmed and gave a speech. However, Apple has not yet publicly announced or commented. 

Chinese President Xi Jinping is among the top politicians who attended the Tsinghua as an undergraduate. The advisory board at the SEM includes the head of the school, businessmen and senior government officials. Cook will be succeeding Breyer Capital founder and CEO Jim Breyer, who was appointed in 2016. According to the reports, cook met with the head of China's market regulatory last week which was after Apple was caught in the middle of ongoing tension between the mainland and protesters in Hong Kong. 

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Apple caught in the middle

While the pro-democracy protests are still ongoing in Hong Kong, a bipartisan group of US lawmakers, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and Democratic Rep. Alexandra Ocasio Cortez even wrote to Apple along with video game studio Activision Blizzard in order to condemn the protest-related censorship on behalf of China. The group further has urged Apple to reverse its decision to remove its app store the crowdsourced mapping app HKMaplive which is used to report the police locations in the city. Similarly, they addressed the issue of Activision Blizzard suspending a Hong Kong gamer after he voiced support for the demonstrators during an interview.

“Cases like these raise real concerns about whether Apple and other large U.S. entities will bow to growing Chinese demands rather than lose access to more than a billion Chinese consumers,” said the letter sent Friday and co-signed by Sens. Marco Rubio and Ron Wyden and Reps. Mike Gallagher and Tom Malinowski.

(With AP inputs) 

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