This story is about the integrity of reporting from Bloomberg. An important tradition in journalism is the firewall between the money making and the news reporting parts of an organization. Yes, that firewall is breached entirely too often, but many new media organizations simply don't have the tradition at the management level.
That is important to know, no matter who is applying pressure on the money side.
However, Bloomberg should be read knowing they are owned by a company and owner that does not respect their journalistic independence. Readers should know if it comes down to journalism or their billion-dollar terminal business [1], the terminals win.
[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bloombergs-business-...
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/04/bloomberg-journalists-free-t...
Most papers aren't independent.
That doesn't mean Bezos does not have influence, nor that he won't, hasn't, or isn't exercising it inappropriately. But what Bloomberg did is discussed to great lengths in Journalism 101. That's hard to keep quiet.
...with the full cooperation of western corporations.
* slow clap*
But no. Study the history of the Middle Kingdom. They invented totalitarian bureaucratic central government centuries ago.
Whether the western control is direct or indirect, it is indisputable that the CCP is not an indigenous movement. It is a product of western ideological imperialism.
As a very visual example, go travel around China, visiting areas with greater and lesser CCP control. The less the control, the more elements of traditional China are around. The greater the control, the more it looks like a replica of yet another Western metropolis.
I saw this very clearly when visiting Xinjing province near Tibet and hiking through the villages. The normal part of the village has traditional, hand made housing, beautiful craftsmenship, great food. Then, on the outskirts of the villages, were towering, empty apartment blocks. The CCP planned to move the villagers out of their traditional homes into these huge apartment blocks they could more easily control.
So, yes, most clearly the CCP is a product of the west, not ethnic Chinese culture.
But if you're just pointing out the Western origin of the foundations of Chinese Communism them, yes, I agree the whole thing could be seen, from the POV of the West, as being confronted with a kind of social/political prodigal son. I'm so used to thinking of communism as an Eastern thing, but you're right (again).
Well the CCP is stumping hard on the propaganda front. They've shoved the Dalai Lama out of the spot light, etc., and they're working hard to influence Western media, and IMO too many are happy to go along with that to make money. Don't get me started on tech companies. I just don't think that there's a lot of secretly pro-communists in the West.
> And, a communist china fits the purposes of capitalist west quite well.
How?
> So, I would say if there are western elite controlling China, they are doing it for personal gain, not ideological.
Ah but isn't that true of all elites globally? I'm not trying to "whataboutism" here, I just assume that most if not all elites are ideologically agnostic.
It's intellectually dishonest to wax philosophical and paint the consumers as the problem. Powerful people have made conscious decisions to short sell their countrymen in the interest personal gain. My witting or not engagement with their company is not the problem. It is ridiculous, to the point where I must question the motives behind your comment, to offload the moral responsibility of every company onto their customers. It is impossible for every person to vet every company and their adjuncts. I did not tell Amazon to work their employees so hard that the only way they can keep their job is by wearing diapers. No. The responsibility for decisions like this rests solely on the few people at Amazon who have the power to change such conditions. Whether I shop at Amazon or not is immaterial. It is the responsibility of government to step in and try the greedy tyrants at every abusive company for their wholesale abuse of Americans. The fact that government has not arrested these abusive people is a reflection on the quality of people in position to effect real changes. reply
Corruption isn't a one way street here. The real story isn't 'the CCP is trying to infiltrate western governments!' because everyone remotely aware of the geopolitical game already knows this. You and I aren't going to be able to do anything about this and it's just avoiding things we CAN do.
Which is pressuring our local governments and companies to not engage in this obvious corruption. Which means going back to the original point of the article which is Bloomberg purposely burying stories for the sake of appeasing foreign powers.
As an aside, your comment is nearly dead only 3 minute after posting.
As for the surprise factor, if you look at the history of the CCP and the way they use capitalism against itself it makes a lot of sense. China is a huge country worth its weight in gold to corporations, many of whom are now deeply embedded because of how much profit it generates. If they rebuke China, that means losing (a lot) of money which goes against how our system works.
In this sense, it's the free market working as intended. Which is easily gamed by political powers by tossing more money and incentives into the system.
It's fine if you don't want to read them, it's fine if you read them and disagree, it's not fine for you to continue flouting the rules here, and this has zero to do with liking or disliking China or communist parties. It's about having a site that doesn't devolve into flamewar tirefires. Please stop now.
And that “real” story has been covered by the quoted NY Times article, and is not the major subject of this story. This also shows that only some western institutions are corrupted by China, including Bloomberg, but not all.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/29/world/asia/wang-jianlin-a...
This article isn't about that, though: it's about companies with deep pockets trying to silence not just their (former) employees, but their employees' family members as well. Considering that companies like Bloomberg have the resources to financially ruin people if they don't comply, and seemed like they were fully ready to exercise that option, this is incredibly troubling.
- Sign this NDA, get the money you want or need.
- Don't publish critical articles about the nomenclatura if you want our money (via terminal sales in the Chinese market)