People of China protest, for American companies there it’s business as usual supporting the CCP

Ordinary citizens in China have taken to the streets to protest the Chinese Communist Party’s lockdown edicts as regime attempts to end the spread of COVID.

The government there has ordered hundreds of millions of Chinese to remain essentially (and apparently in some cases literally) locked in their homes.

The effect has been to lead university students and many others to object to the draconian measures imposed by a regime that appears fully invested in centrally controlled measures that have yet to yield positive results.

Along with the lockdowns, China is dedicated to using its own vaccinations that are clearly not as effective as U.S. products.

There is no acceptable level of protest in China as its senior leaders fear the populace more so than any foreign enemy including the United States and European nations.

Protests have intensified due to actions that, in addition to the lockdown, are seen as additive to the negative effects on citizens. In one instance a fire was allegedly not put out for three hours leading to as many as ten deaths, due to lockdown measures (which of course the government denies is the reason for the fire response difficulties).

The economy which is central to placating the citizenry is also going awry. Xi Jinping, in securing a third term has selected senior leaders that are seen as wanting to pull back from China’s 40 year movement of opening its economy.

Hong Kong stocks plunged November 28 mainly due to the protests in China.

The response from the White House? A strange level of quiet. The Biden administration issued a pronouncement about the “right to peaceful protest,” but little else except that it intends to continue climate negotiations. 

Why would U.S. officials believe it is worth ignoring significant human rights violations and illicit business practices (including exporting large quantities of fentanyl that end up on American streets) on the off-chance China is considering altering its ways about climate change? China has exhibited no actions that indicate the regime cares about the topic of climate change at all.

While this uprising is perhaps in its early stages, it is not obvious that even a harsh response would change the American position.

The administration’s willingness to overlook China’s considerable abuses meshes with that of many major U.S. companies.

The time has come to take notice of companies that insist on doing business with China despite its deceptive and criminal practices, that are exacerbated by its horrendous record on human rights.

The American giant Apple recently published iOS 16.1.1. One unpublicized feature, that applies only to Chinese iPhones, enables users to share “files wirelessly with one another…using close-range wireless communication,” without the need for the Internet but for only 10 minutes at a time in the “everyone” setting before shutting down and requiring the user to turn it back on. Outside China --- everywhere else on Earth --- users can set the “everyone” setting to be on permanently.

Protestors, particularly moving about in cities, can trade protest materials easily and share information that the Internet in China, tightly under the control of the CCP, would detect.

It is not clear that the CCP directed Apple to conveniently design this new feature, but it is only for the China market, and it is odd that such a workaround is helpful to protestors in China right now.

Disney has once again made Bob Iger the new CEO of the Walt Disney company who has a long history of bowing to the CCP’s dictatorial junta, despite a litany of human rights abuses.

His company has issued no statements denouncing the country’s threats to Taiwan, or even on China’s well-known theft of intellectual property. And of course, much, much more.

For China? He broke ground on Hong Kong in 2005, as then-company president, Shanghai Disneyland in 2011 and there is no indication that will change.

In 2017, he resigned from President Trump’s business advisory council due to the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement. His affinity for saving the planet does not, apparently, extend to China.

Iger is also less willing to accept even clearly democratic of processes leading to laws he does not like in the U.S. Iger, then still in his first run as CEO, said in 2019 that producing Disney films in the state of Georgia would be “very difficult,” due to the state’s then-new abortion law.

He has made no comments about China’s handling of protests in Hong Kong, he publicly refused to comment, or the fact that China is the biggest carbon emitter in the world. Not a word about Uyghurs and their plight.

In 2020, there were even reports that Iger wanted to be considered for the position of ambassador to China. Even the Washington Post balked.

It is unlikely the recent unrest will result in any different reactions among major American companies.

For U.S. government and U.S.-based companies much soul-searching, and practical assessment, needs to take place in evaluating whether to continue to overlook China’s atrocities in search of a climate change deal, that is unlikely to yield any behavioral change in China, or continue to do large scale business there now or invest in China in the future.

China is a house of cards and being there when it tumbles will destroy whoever is positioned in the country. We can now see for China for what it is and has always really been --- a totalitarian and ruthless communist regime that oppresses its people on a scale we can barely comprehend.

It is time to end the madness.

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James Hutton is a former assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and is a retired colonel in the U.S. Army. Follow him on Twitter @jehutton.