Taiwan News:

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

And:

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

And:

The advisory board … comprises entrepreneurs, business school deans, scholars, leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and financial departments.

The CCP is a key to this story. Why?

Apple was recently forced by the CCP to remove a crowdsourced map service from its App Store that allowed Hong Kong protesters to track police activity. Cook defended the removal in an email to employees and emphasized the app was removed for illegal use.