A report in The Wall Street Journal published today provided new insights and analysis on Apple's heavy reliance on partners in China to manufacture its products.

The piece is timed with fluctuating stock for Apple and serious concerns about its ability to meet its goals and ship products to its millions of customers as efforts to contain the coronavirus debilitate the company's supply lines. Twice in about a year, Apple's profits and market value have suffered because of problems faced in China. First, it was the United States' trade war with the country. Now it's the health crisis.

Some Apple staffers, executives, and investors have in the past expressed concerns about the company's reliance on the region; generally, it's ideal business practice for a large multinational corporation to diversify and not become overly dependent on one market, region, or partner.

Citing people familiar with the discussions, the WSJ story claims some Apple executives floated the idea in 2015 to assemble at least one product in Vietnam instead of China as a first step toward building out the needed infrastructure and base of workers to make a bigger transition over time. However, "senior managers rebuffed the idea."

Apple has made some attempts to make products outside of China, though. It has tried making AirPods in Vietnam to skirt US-China tariffs, iPhones in India to avoid an Indian tax an imports for iPhones sold in India, and Macs in the United States in limited ways. But the report says these trial runs have "laid bare a number of difficulties."

Speaking with experts such as researchers and former Foxconn executives, the article argues what others have previously argued: it's simply not possible for Apple to make the change frustrated investors and employees want it to make. For one example why, the article says:

The population in China has allowed suppliers to build factories with a capacity for more than 250,000 people. The number of migrant workers in China, who do much of Apple's production, exceed Vietnam's total population of 100 million. India is the closest comparison, but its roads, ports, and infrastructure lag far behind those in China.

Additionally, the Chinese consumer market accounts for a significant portion of Apple's product sales, and a dramatic move to cut ties could jeopardize that market for the company. Paraphrasing Strategy Analytics technology researcher Neil Mawston, the article goes on to say that "employing so many local workers helped the company gain access to the market and any reduction might weaken its standing with the government, which wields tremendous influence over how global brands are perceived."

That said, Apple is already facing fierce competition in the region from local rivals like Huawei—in some cases because of an Apple boycott movement by Chinese consumers in response to rhetoric around the trade tensions between the US and China.

When asked about the possibility of making big changes to the company's supply base in a recent Fox Business interview, Apple CEO Tim Cook responded:

My perspective sitting here today is that if there are changes, you're talking about adjusting some knobs, not some sort of wholesale fundamental change.

There are more details worth reading in the Wall Street Journal story, such as the history of Samsung's move out of China, more specific reasons it's so difficult to manufacture iPhones elsewhere, Apple's response to US President Donald Trump's combative trade policies with China, and Apple executives' and employees' concerns about labor practices in the country.

Some of the Journal's sources are part of a chorus of analyst and researcher voices that generally agree that the symbiotic relationship between Apple, Foxconn, China, and the United States is vital and inescapable for a company in Apple's position. But that hasn't stopped investors from being worried about profits. Neither has it prevented watchdogs, consumers, and Apple employees from confronting complicated questions about labor rights in developing economies.

To make matters worse, there has been a growing trend of anti-China sentiment or even outright Sinophobia in Western nations in reaction to relentless news stories in Western press outlets—some responsibly reported, some not—about labor crisis, the coronavirus, Hong Kong protests, controversial treatment by the Chinese government of indigenous Muslim populations, and US-China trade policies, among other concerns.

Just as many economists argue that the economic futures of the United States, Europe, and many other regions are inextricably tied to China, analysts, researchers, and Apple leadership argue that Apple's future is inextricably tied to partners like Foxconn that have built operations in China that may be impossible to replicate elsewhere.

Like many other US companies, the question for Apple can't possibly be whether or not to engage with China at all. Rather, it must be how to best weather the storms that inevitably come with that engagement. And it's a question that sits at the very heart of much of the world's current debates and upheaval about globalization, openness, trade, labor, the environment, and multiculturalism.

According to The Wall Street Journal, there's no easy answer to the China question on the horizon for US tech giants, so grappling with these issues is going to be an existential challenge for Apple for a long time to come.