SAN FRANCISCO -- Apple CEO Tim Cook shared his insights on innovation and sent best wishes to the Chinese people in an interview with a young Chinese blogger.

He Shijie, a senior student at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, published the online interview on Thursday.

Cook insisted that there's no one formula for innovation, but a culture of creativity and a culture of collaboration can help with it. He also noted that diversity plays an important role. "You put people together that have different skills, that look at the world differently. Maybe they're from different places, they have different backgrounds ... and it is amazing what can come out of it."

"I really believe that 2020 was our top year of innovation ever, between the phones and the watch and the iPads, and M1," he said in the interview.

According to Cook, there's a ton of features in Apple's devices that was developed based on Chinese consumers' feedback such as specific keyboards and the QR Code mode.

"China is so far ahead in the coverage model for 5G. And so we listen very carefully to our customers there and wind up creating things based on that that is then given to the world," he said.

"I love the history in China and the arts. Last year, I went to the Palace Museum (the Forbidden City) in Beijing. They were celebrating their 600th anniversary. This for me is unbelievable because there's nothing in the U.S. that's, obviously, 600 years old," Cook said.

"But if I say one thing, it's about people. It's meeting people. It's meeting developers, to see what developers are working on. It's customers, and seeing what customers do with our products," he added.

Cook also serves as the chairman of the advisory board of the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management.

"I'm having a great time doing that and meeting many of the students there. The talent in the study body is unbelievable. And so it's a real privilege," he told He.

Cook viewed education as the great equalizer of people, citing that Apple has designed curricula like Everyone Can Create and Everyone Can Code for students, "because we believe that coding and creativity are two of the important skills of the future."

Cook saw the year 2020 as a test for resilience, expressing best wishes to the Chinese people in the year of the ox. "I can't wish enough happiness and health and all of those things that sometimes we take for granted but we've been reminded of the last year of how important they are."

On cooperation, Cook cited an old saying rooted both in China and the English-speaking world -- we're all in the same boat. "I do believe that. I believe we're all in the same boat, and we can do amazing things together. We can get out of this pandemic together. There're so many things that we can do together," he noted.