I know there are enormous profits to be made in China, but I wonder if American investors ever think to themselves ... by investing in this place I am strengthening a regime that ultimately is the enemy of my values.
Corporations, while it might pain them on some level, want to exist in a free, open and democratic sociality since it gives them access to courts and people in power. In Authoritarian systems, people at the top, just take whatever they want and there is nothing to be done about it.
Also, a foreign corporation is never going to have access to the higher levels of the Authoritarian government because they are foreign. Places like China don't care about foreign corporations because at the end of the day, there is nothing they can do to help the head authoritarian.
Likewise, business as a whole in the US (and elsewhere) has no issue supporting the more authoritarian and repressive of the two political parties. They prefer it, in fact, because of what it does for them in limiting worker and consumer rights. When you're in the upper class of society, most of the repressive rules don't personally apply to you.
This is potentially the start of a boring partisan flame war. Let's not do that.
The Republican and Democratic parties both have some platforms that strike outsiders as authoritarian and repressive. But debating them on HN doesn't work well IME.
If you're waiting for the S&P500 to optimize for freedom and democracy, and justice, and reasonably-priced love, you're going to be in for a very, very long wait. It actively optimizes for the comfort of its executives and shareholder value first and second, and for the rest of society not at all.
Yeah, I think there's a reason the best and brightest in China often try to immigrate to the USA, Canada, Australia, etc. Its not for the food, believe me.