At The Federalist website, Helen Raleigh argues that both ordinary travelers visiting China and firms doing business in China are at ever greater risk from the government there, in part because “as the Sino-U.S. relationship deteriorated . . . the Chinese Communist Party has increasingly resorted to holding foreigners as hostages and demanding their home countries make political concessions.” Currently, the Chinese government is wrongfully detaining about 200 American citizens.
Foreign companies in China and their employees are vulnerable to raids, detentions, massive fines, and other abuses. The Chinese government recently passed a counter-espionage law which defines national security so vaguely “that doing business in China has become a land mine for foreign companies and businesspeople.” The government also seeks to dictate what foreign firms may say and do beyond China’s borders.
Raleigh writes, in a July 18, 2023 commentary:
Given the increasing risks for Americans and American businesses in China, it is puzzling that top executives of some of the largest American corporations, from Apple’s CEO Tim Cook to Microsoft’s founder Bill Gates to J.P. Morgan’s CEO Jamie Dimond, remain bullish about their business perspectives in China, and have all made pilgrimages to Beijing in recent months to kowtow to Xi. Tesla’s Elon Musk even joined 15 Chinese automakers in signing an open letter, pledging their commitment to enhancing China’s “core socialist values.”
If Musk and other American executives think they can protect their business interests in China by playing nice with Xi, they must think again. Should Xi invade Taiwan, he will not hesitate to confiscate the assets and technologies of American companies in China and hold employees of these companies as hostages. American corporations doubling down on their investments in China now while ignoring the growing geopolitical risks are acting irresponsibly toward their shareholders and employees.
In addition to prospective economic and other losses, decision-makers at these firms are already suffering moral losses. They are morally degrading themselves by cooperating with and submitting to the Chinazi regime; in some cases, by providing China with the data and tools that help it to surveil, oppress, torture, and murder.
Researchers Valentin Weber and Vasilis Ververis found that even after wide reporting of the role of U.S. companies in helping China develop its massive digital surveillance program, at least six companies involved in doing so were still, as of the summer of 2021, supplying “vital equipment to Chinese police departments across the country”: Cisco, Dell, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle.
The August 2021 report by Weber and Ververis, “China’s Surveillance State: A Global Project: How American and Chinese companies collaborate in the construction and distribution of China’s information control apparatus,” is available at the top10vpn.com website.
