Agreed. We should expect governments to take ethical stands not for profit companies that only care about profit. Unfortunately western governments are also being totally hypocritical when it comes to China.
A couple laws would deal with the problem quite rapidly but we first need to get this social-darwinistic neoliberal ideology out of our collective arses...
I fail to imagine how laws can convince a profit-maximizing entity to stop behaving like profit-maximizing entity.
China is a great example to be studied in this regard. Their changes do indeed ensure that profit will only be one of several considerations for company policies in China; this will undoubtedly result in more consumer-friendly corporate behavior, but it also tightens central control and is likely to deepen the kind of censorship measures that I personally would not want to wish on any person or company.
Letting all people (of a given country) have a say means involving the government in which the company's headquarters are located. I'd rather not have national[istic] interests working from within companies, I feel laws and regulations are better suited to get a fair & transparent outcome.
The German model that the sibling comment brought up is quite sane in comparison. It limits the stakeholders to only those who actively participate in production, which provides a kind of decentralization enforced by laws, but not directly steered by central interests. In terms of overall benefit to society, it's hard to argue against that model and it has served the Germans well. (However, it's also worth noting that having unions sit on the board doesn't prevent the company from making unfavorable decisions outside of the limited national and workplace-environment-related interest of the extra stakeholders, and often those changes can only be deferred / slowed down but not outright avoided.)
Besides, in Germany Unions such as IG Metal _do_ sit on the Board.
What kind of stupidity is this? The Chinese government is an authoritarian oligarchy and doesn't give two shits about "ensuring the populace's interest." It cares about maintaining its power and control.
I think you need to cleanse yourself of your free-market straw men. It's not a bad idea for there to be more stakeholders in control of companies than just the shareholders. For instance, you could split the board between shareholders, employees, and customer representatives. That's not a radical idea either. IIRC, German unions have long had seats on their employer's board of directors, see: