Apple CEO Tim Cook to serve as chairman at Chinese school amid Hong Kong protests controversy

After Apple caved to China requests to stop helping Hong Kong protesters avoid police, CEO Tim Cook lands role at a Chinese school.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has landed a cushy new role at a Chinese university.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has been appointed chairman of the advisory board for Tsinghua University’s economics school in Beijing, according to the South China Morning Post and a Chinese-language meeting summary noted by Apple Insider.

Mr Cook apparently will assume the role for a three-year term and recently served as chairman for a meeting, the South China Morning Postreported.

As the Post noted, Chinese government officials and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg have served on the board in the past.

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Still, the news came at a time of widespread unrest in Hong Kong, as hundreds of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets to demand political rights and police accountability.

Apple faced a bipartisan uproar recently when it took down a crowdsourced map of Hong Kong police presence from the App Store — an app that pro-democracy protesters had used — after Chinese state media criticised the company.

The app developers said protesters were using the app to avoid violent confrontations with police, but Apple said they were using it to target officers, citing non-specific ‘credible information’ from authorities.

On Friday, a group of US politicians including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ted Cruz sent a letter to Mr Cook to express their “strong concern” about Apple’s “censorship of apps”.

“We urge you in the strongest terms to reverse course,” the politicians wrote in the letter, “to demonstrate that Apple puts values above market access and to stand with the brave men and women fighting for basic rights and dignity in Hong Kong.”

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Protesters set fire to a shop of Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi on Sunday.

Mr Cook, who reportedly met with Chinese regulators late last week, defended pulling the app in a letter to employees, writing: “Over the past several days we received credible information, from the Hong Kong Cybersecurity and Technology Crime Bureau, as well as from users in Hong Kong, that the app was being used maliciously to target individual officers for violence and to victimise individuals and property where no police are present.”

— with Fox News’ Chris Ciaccia

This article originally appeared on Fox News and was reproduced with permission