Apple CEO Tim Cook becomes chairman of China university board

Apple Inc. President Tim Cook is the new chairman of the Advisory Board of the School of Economics and Management (SEM) of Tsinghua University in Beijing, China.

As indicated by Tsinghua University SEM’s public WeChat account, the 20th meeting of the advisory board was held at the Beijing campus on Oct. 18. The meeting was led by Tim Cook, with 35 individuals in participation.

Tim Cook’s role will be to advance the improvement of the college and make it a world-class economic management school. His mandate will last from 2019 to 2022.

The advisory board was set up in 2000. It includes entrepreneurs, business school deans, scholars, leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and financial departments.

The day preceding the advisory board meeting, Tim Cook met with Xiao Ya-qing (肖亞慶), director of China’s State Administration for Market Regulation in Beijing. As per the department’s official website, “The two sides have conducted in-depth exchanges on expanding investment and business development in China, protecting consumer rights and fulfilling corporate social responsibility.”

Apple actively works within the Chinese market. Despite the fact that Cook has met with significant level Chinese official authorities in recent years, a large number of Apple’s initiatives have been “looked down on” by China, as per CNA.

Apple was recently constrained by the CCP to expel a crowdsourced map service from its App Store that permitted Hong Kong dissenters to track police movement. Cook defended the expulsion in an email to workers and emphasized the application was evacuated for unlawful use.

Prior this month, the Taiwan flag emoticon disappeared from Hong Kong and Macau iPhone clients’ keyboards after a software update. Simultaneously, the U.S. online media Quartz, which was giving an account of the Hong Kong fights, was expelled from the Chinese version of the App Store.

Updates on Cook’s new role comes during trade war talks between the U.S. and China. As per Liberty Times, some netizens have commented that Cook is “wasting his time trying to stabilize the Chinese market.”