I'm not sure exactly what bugs me about this particular issue. My sense of anxiety over it has something to do with how it's a sign. We all know it's right and proper to have no neutral opinion about Apple, but then the Chinese gov goes and does this? There's something about the maneuver that just isn't right.
Potentially this is a version of culture shock talking. But then, a government mobilising its people to cause commercial damage is... well, do government's even do that? This one does. Do others? Is it their province to do so?
I think it's true the government does govern. They do exert control over the country and the people. And they do aim to improve prosperity and conditions generally. They do work on public issues. They do the work of managing social conditions. And as I write sentences that move closer and closer to describing the work of a modern national government, the less reasonable those sentences sound of what's going on in this country.
Then again, it isn't up to the national government to be a provincial or a city government, so maybe that's okay too. (And I don't know much about provincial or city levels of gov other than the usual talk of the immensity of the corruption, but in this context that's just talk.)
So, kicking Apple in the nuts... as much as it's entertaining, and that is why I put this in the BS Pit, how does it help the Chinese people? Apple is hooked up with China Unicorn and that alone makes China its second biggest market. If Apple did a deal with China Mobile, Apple's China market would get really big. And whatever version of iPhone the deal was made about, it'd support China Mobile's China-only 3G standard, and China Mobile could go from strength to strength developing a China-only standard of communication infrastructure that didn't have to rely on foreign technology, nor pay royalties outside the state. And this would help the Chinese people?
Perhaps, actually, it would. But it's mercantilism.
In a world that's supposed to be going global.
Perhaps it's scary only because it's new. Chinese hegemony wouldn't be all that bad for the world, would it?