Can we please start a cultural movement that forces large corporations to choose between appeasing Chinese censors and looking like fools to the rest of the west or getting banned in China.
Really seems like a win win scenario.
Really seems like a win win scenario.
Chinese Tencent owns 5 percent of Blizzard, if full owner of Riot Games, 48% of Epic Games, 11.5% of Bluehole (Fortnite and PUBG), 5% of Ubisoft. They are also investor in Discord. https://www.pcgamer.com/every-game-company-that-tencent-has-...
AMC is fully owned by Chinese. The largest movie theater chain in the United States is fully owned by Chinese.
Legendary Entertainment Group is owned by Chinese.
Forbes Media sold majority stake to Chinese company.
https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/how-joe-biden-empowered-c...
Not really scary. It's better for superpowers to have intertwined economies, rather than be isolated. Less incentives for conquest and war.
I can have a chinese landlord gouging me for west coast rent but can never be a landlord in china.
You can prevent foreigners from buying/owning land/property in US, but that will just lower the value of US dollars held by foreigners significantly and your currency will crash in value.
The foreigners already hold too much US dollars. The ship has sailed. You'll pay either way for enjoying the fruits of cheap foreign labor in the past. It's either devaulation of your currency, or accepting that foreigners will get a piece of US land.
I don't agree with Trump on pretty much anything except for his stance on Chinese trade.
There is an imbalance that needs to be addressed that is being completely ignored by the progressive candidates.
Not saying it will make me vote for the guy in 2020, but it will be a key issue for many others.
A few companies and minority ownership stakes does not mean any super power owns the majority of another super power. That's a wide gulf.
I'm tired of the idea that the Western and Chinese markets can both be appeased the middle of the road morality.
What is happening in HK right now is wrong, and the west has fought wars over this very issue.
It's hard to imagine people stopping using Uber, Lyft, Twitter, Snapchat, Fox News just because Saudis are heavily invested.
It's interesting to watch this unfold for someone who isn't entrenched in any of these spheres.
Which ones?
Also, China has nukes, we probably don't want to see that war starting. I don't think there's a good military option available.
I also would love to know which wars we (the US, or the Western world) have gone to over those principles (versus e.g. "over oil"), because I can't think of any.
If there was an actual point in "it's about human rights", the US would come down on Turkey like an anvil on a cartoon character in old animated movies. Instead, the US appears to support Turkey's new expansive invasion of Syria that goes hand in hand with their genocidal desires to annihilate the Kurds. It's never about human rights on the international stage, it's about power.
It could be about hegemony and influence. the NBA and Hollywood having to cater and cave in to official Chinese positions. I think it’d be different than say hoi polloi (public opinion) in China dictating what Hollywood does. One is freedom of speech and opinion the other is government coercion and control.
China and what it stands for is the antithesis of those principles.
Our unwillingness to act on what our ancestors viewed as infringements on basic human rights will be the end of the free world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegis_Ballistic_Missile_Defens...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/china-para...
It’ll be interesting if you could talk with him regarding his position for the government, recent issues and long term policy. My bet is he’ll be super supportive and you might be surprised that “greater good” trade off is well accepted
-https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unnao_dead_bodies_row
And many sources mention they did this just because they can’t afford proper cremation.
Another funny picture is Train with many people attached outside, not sure if that’s another convention or custom :)
But despite the widespread nationalist zealotry, most ordinary folk still seem to enjoy bootlegging Western media choc full of Western morality. They're not trying to ban it.
Though of course China does have its very own PC police that are encouraged by the government.
Read Mao's "On Contradiction".
It's possible that that's just normalized for you but it seems jarring when you see someone revering a 'commie'. The programming runs deep on all sides.
AMC was majority-owned by China’s Dalian Wanda, but they scaled back from 60% to 38% about a year ago.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amc-dalian-wanda-silver-l...
That’s a tricky one. The “woke” don’t care about all the Saudi money in Uber and WeWork despite that regimes hideous treatment of gays, women, dissidents and so on.
http://www.rhsansfrontieres.org/en/183-to-see/287-forced-lab...
Have uber or wework fired employees for being gay or women?
And these are private companies bought by private investors (ok one could argue it's Chinese government money..), what does that have to do with government deficit?
Hearthstone is massive in China. Hearthstone has far more players than all other regions combined. The chinese market is what keeps the game alive.
That is the problem here.
Totally incomparable.
America has the First Amendment. Its government and corporations can be held accountable in courts. Any rando has the capacity to pine off about anything on Twitter. Meanwhile China boasts a centralised bureaucracy literally censoring Winnie the Pooh images because its dictator doesn’t like his resemblance.
Yes, America has a media ownership concentration problem. No, it’s not remotely comparable to Xi’s Beijing.
We are increasingly becoming the product that is being sold.
But what about the share-holder value?
Corporations love sitting the moral grey area on issues like this, but putting them in a position of having to choose between looking like Chinese stooges or getting banned from China will break their minds.
It sure doesn't seem to me that bending to the will of an authoritarian state is "sitting in the moral grey area." They've made their decision.
I was glad to see earlier on CNN a 'super' writing "NBA Commissioner: we are no apologizing..."
But the first 24h the reactions went from not existing to laughable. Good to see that freedom is more important than revenue.
I would say at most, 10% of the US consumes/pays for NBA related products. NBA finals are estimated to have 15M viewers last year, so even doubling that you're only getting to 10%.
Start sending messages to every game dev, project manager, and director at these companies asking them why they support the totalitarian oppression of HK. Ask them what they are currently doing to limit the influence of totalitarian regimes on their corporate policy.
Make the issue personal for the companies by fomenting discontent from within.
But the only options available to the employees from that point onwards is group organization (eg. unionization) which is itself politically controversial and prone to ruining their careers (see: google employees' organizing efforts resulting in the majority of the original organizers being foistered out of google) or leaving which puts their livelihoods in jeopardy as they abandon one of the biggest employers of their industry..
If people aren't willing to stand behind their beliefs at the risk of temporary financial hardship to support people putting their lives at risk to stand against a lifetime under tyrannical rule then they do not deserve the freedoms their country affords them.
What happens if it's not temporary? What happens if I'm blackballed for my whole career?
Asking for sacrifice from the people who have the least amount of power as individuals, and the most to lose, when there is another option-- demand the sacrifice on the part of an unfeeling instution with no family just a C-suite and a board-- is borderline inhumane.
They had dependents, they had parents, they had the least amount of power as individuals. Yet they were able to defeat a world super power and usher in an era of personal freedom that swept the world.
A couple of employees having a difficult conversation and maybe writing a memo that starts a conversation in a tech company is not the same sacrifice as the ones made by the people who shaped the world we live in now.
If you work in a company that has a presence in China, and you believe in the concept of inalienable human rights then these are issues you raise in a constructive manner in your workplace.
If you are unwilling to take that risk due to financial repercussions then so be it, but you are a coward.
Financial repercussions like losing healthcare for your children or spouse, whose chronic illnesses (At least 30% of the general population) may require medication costing thousands of dollars a month? Again, should the person's families and communities be sacrificed?
It needs to be clear to them that this is a binary choice, you either support totalitarianism or you are against it.
A couple of snarky tweets isn't going to save hong kong, and taiwan after that.
The writing is on the wall, if we don't stand against China now the rest of the world will stand idly by as they erase 200+ years of liberalism and the greatest improvement in human rights in our species history.
The situation in HK is bad, but at the end of the day people still want to keep their jobs, and company leaders need to try to do what is in the best interests for the company and the employees.
It wouldn't happen, but assuming if it did and you made companies pick between demonstrating integrity or looking the other way to do business with China and be publicly denounced, any half decent leader would bite the bullet and do the former, essentially every large US company.
Also keep in mind how much money from Chinese companies is integrated into the US. Things are much more complicated than you make out, I don't think it is right to draw a line in the sand and push this 'you're either with us or against us' narrative.
Things can't stay like this in China for long, the change will happen from within the country, all we can do as business partners is try to not get involved in the ensuing chaos and protect our own well being and loved ones.