Apple Polishes Corporate Citizen Image With Factory Visit

Apple CEO Tim Cook toured one of his company’s Chinese manufacturing partners on his latest trip to China, spotlighting the tech giant’s corporate social responsibility efforts in one of its most important markets for both sales and production.

Cook visited Shenzhen-listed Luxshare Precision Industry Co. Ltd. during his latest stop this week in the Yangzte River Delta area around Shanghai, following his delivery of a speech at China’s top annual internet conference in the nearby town of Wuzhen. Whereas his first stop featured luminaries from both the Chinese and global internet worlds, this one was centered on the thousands of workers who actually make Apple’s iPhones, computers and other products, many of them in China.

Luxshare has worked with Apple since 2009, starting as a manufacturer of connector cables for iMac computers. The relationship has expanded over the years, to include such products as the iPad, Apple Watch, chargers, and most recently AirPods, the company’s popular wireless earbuds.

The relationship has been hugely beneficial to Luxshare, which became Apple’s second AirPods manufacturer in the first half of this year. The company now counts Apple as easily its largest single customer, providing many times more revenue than its next largest. And the size of the relationship continues to grow.

“We want very high quality. We like to do business with people who treat people with respect, because people produce the best work in that environment,” Cook told a small group of reporters during a tour of Luxshare’s factory in the city of Kunshan, about an hour drive from Shanghai. “If we do the right things for people, we will always be a place where people want to work.”

Cook has become a frequent China traveler, visiting the country at least twice a year in recent years, often touring facilities and announcing big new investments. China is one of the company’s top global markets, accounting for nearly a fifth of its sales.

The market’s importance for not only Apple but many other global high-tech giants was on display earlier this week when Cook and other top industry executives attended the event in Wuzhen, which China is billing as its main internet conference each year.

Other top executives at the event included CEOs from Google and Cisco Systems Inc., as well as senior officials from Microsoft Corp. and Qualcomm Inc.

Contact reporter Yang Ge (geyang@caixin.com)