Greedy America's Money Cult: The Long List of Beijing Ass-Kissers

Don’t be mad at the NBA. Hundreds of U.S. companies have sold out to Chinese tyrants.

By Sally Jenkins

Get off the NBA’s back, all you people who want sports to be the children’s literature of your lost youth.

Somehow, because the Houston Rockets capitulated to their Chinese business partners, the league is now supposed to be a gutless violator of human rights?

You better start with General Electric.
Or KFC. 

Or how about Walmart?
It’s more than a little ludicrous for everyone from Ted Cruz to Beto O’Rourke to suddenly hand the NBA and the Rockets the tab for American toadying to authoritarians in Beijing. 

If they want to draw that line in the sand, they can draw it with any of their favorite dozen American corporations — only that wouldn’t be so politically convenient, would it?
It’s easier to hurl righteous outrage and umbrage at a large target such as Rockets star James Harden, who on Monday apologized to China for "hurt feelings" at the behest of his bosses. 

“We love China,” he said. 

It’s far more pat and satisfying to go all-in at Rockets management for making General Manager Daryl Morey apologize for his tweet over the weekend in support of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. 

“I did not intend my tweet to cause any offense to Rockets fans and friends of mine in China,” he said in a statement.
And, boy, isn’t it an easy viral sound clip to accuse the entire NBA of “blatant prioritization of profits over human rights,” as O’Rourke did, and call it an embarrassment, simply because the league called the incident “regrettable” and tried to patch things up with Chinese dictators?
You want to be angry at the NBA for cowering in the face of China’s authoritarian regime? 

You want to accuse NBA Commissioner Adam Silver of supporting a murderous dictatorship simply to further business interests in China? 

Fine. 

Good for you.
But understand the NBA is only imitating that smooth move patented by dozens of other fine, flag-waving American corporations in their dealings with China. 

A half-dozen American corporate sponsors set the template a decade ago at the Beijing Olympics, when they colluded in the silencing of U.S. athletes and were far more directly complicit in a host of human rights violations.
Remember what champs Visa and General Electric were when the Chinese refused to grant entry to American athlete Joey Cheek because he had been too audible of an activist against abuses in Darfur? 

And how about the courageous support Coca-Cola gave to Chinese dissidents when Beijing authorities cracked down on them in advance of those Games?
Never forget the standup position Johnson & Johnson took when Steven Spielberg quit as artistic director of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies because Beijing not only failed to honor a single one of the reform promises it had made in procuring the right to host the Games but actually went on a terroristic bender against its own citizens, destroying whole neighborhoods, enlisting slave labor and throwing anyone who didn’t like it into a camp.
Ford. 

GM. 

Starbucks. 

Papa John’s. 

All of them do massive business with China. 

Abercrombie & Fitch. 

Boeing. 

Procter & Gamble. 

Start with them. 

All of them have long known what the conditions and equations are for doing business in the China market.
Australian journalist Geremie Barmé, who has covered China for many years, sums it up in a phrase: “contentious friendship.”
“To be a "friend" of China, the foreigner is often expected to stomach unpalatable situations, and keep silent in the face of egregious behavior,” he has written. 

“A "friend" of China might enjoy the privilege of offering the occasional word of caution in private; in the public arena he or she is expected to have the good sense and courtesy to be ‘objective.’ That is to toe the line, whatever that happens to be. The concept of ‘friendship’ thus degenerates into little more than an effective tool for emotional blackmail and enforced complicity.”
Throughout the Beijing Olympics, American companies remained silent. 

So did IOC President Jacques Rogge. 

When Rogge finally did open his mouth to protest someone’s conduct, it wasn’t anyone in China’s leaderships. 

The man he decided to pick was Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, for his bad manners in celebrating too boldly. 

The outrage at the NBA is more than a little remindful of that.
Yes, the NBA has made a mutually beneficial commercial accommodation with China. 

There are 800 million Chinese viewers of the league, according to Time, and there is a 30-year media partnership. 

You have a problem with that or consider it gutless? 

Then you have a problem with literally hundreds of American companies.

Apple the Traitor

Apple Sues Qualcomm In China, Harms U.S. National Security
By Gordon G. Chang

Wednesday, Beijing’s Intellectual Property Court announced that Apple had instituted two lawsuits against Qualcomm.
In one of the cases, the Cupertino-based giant alleges Qualcomm did not license “standard essential patents” properly.
In the other case—the far more significant of the two—Apple is seeking 1 billion yuan ($145.3 million) for violations of China’s Anti-Monopoly Law.
Whatever the merits of the anti-monopoly case—and I am expressing no view on merits here—an Apple win will almost certainly undermine U.S. national security.
As an initial matter, Apple vs. Qualcomm is an ordinary dispute between two giants over—what else?—money. 

Qualcomm’s general counsel, Don Rosenberg, who denied the validity of his adversary’s claims, said the two cases in China “are just part of Apple’s efforts to find ways to pay less for Qualcomm’s technology.”
He’s undoubtedly correct on that score as companies always seek to reduce costs. 

The issue is whether Qualcomm, the world’s leader in chips for mobile phones, violated the Anti-Monopoly Law.
Yet to speak about compliance or violation of the AML, as the antimonopoly law is sometimes called, mischaracterizes the situation.
Yes, the AML is technically a law as it was enacted by the National People’s Congress, the highest organ of state power in China, in 2007. 

The law, however, is a fiction, at least in practical terms, because it is less a legal rule than a club Chinese officials consistently use on foreign companies. 

While Xi Jinping, China’s supremo, has presided over the combination of state enterprises and the recreation of formal monopolies without challenge, Chinese competition officials have been using the AML to undermine the competitiveness of foreign companies, especially American ones.
It should be no surprise, then, that the first known application of the law was against Coca-Cola, when it tried to buy domestically owned Huiyuan Juice Group. 

The deal was blocked in March 2009.
Back then, the AML was best seen as an attempt to provide a statutory justification for what officials had already been doing, stopping acquisitions of local businesses. 

In the months before the AML became effective in August 2008, Beijing had arbitrarily used its power to stop, most notably, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, and Carlyle in proposed high-profile acquisitions.
Having protected domestic enterprises from takeover, officials in the Xi era have adapted the AML to further Beijing’s goal of fostering domestic technology companies — by injuring foreign ones.
The most notable instance of the use of the AML for this purpose involves, perhaps coincidentally, Qualcomm. 

The San Diego-based business in 2015 both paid a 6.1 billion yuan ($975 million) fine for deemed violations of the AML and agreed in a rectification plan to reduce royalties.
Qualcomm’s business model, largely based on royalty streams, has been under attack in the last half decade in, most importantly, South Korea and the U.S. 

In the U.S. this month, the Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint against Qualcomm on the 17th and Apple brought suit against the company in Federal court, in the Southern District of California, on the 20th.
Whatever the merits of these actions in the U.S.—and I express no opinion on these either—the plundering of an American tech company in China can only undermine the United States. 

And that is exactly what will happen because Apple filed suit in China.
The Chinese central government, led by the Communist Party, will do whatever it thinks best for China’s interests in deciding Apple vs. Qualcomm, and it’s clear Beijing will side with Apple. 

If it sides with Apple, it will undermine protection of intellectual property. 

If it undermines intellectual property, it erodes the American economy. 

The American economy, of course, is increasingly dependent on creating such property and licensing it around the world. 

And these days, economic issues ultimately have national security implications, especially when they involve technology. 

So don’t expect Qualcomm to get a fair trial in the Beijing Intellectual Property Court. 

There can be no impartial adjudication in China when the Communist Party believes it has an interest.
In fact, this month China’s top judge effectively confirmed the unfairness of the Chinese court system and even boasted about it. 

On the 14th, Chief Justice Zhou Qiang of the Supreme People’s Court told top provincial judges to reject “erroneous” Western notions of judicial independence. 

Speaking of the “trap” of Western ideas, he rejected criticism of the Party’s leading role. 

“Bare your swords towards false Western ideals like judicial independence,” he demanded.
Zhou’s statement is notably not because it breaks new ideological ground—it does not— but because it is reflective of regressive trends in the Chinese capital. 

As the Financial Times noted, Zhou, once a reformist figure, “fired a warning shot at judicial reformers by formally acknowledging that China’s court system is not independent of the Communist Party and rejecting attempts to make it so.”

Jerome Cohen, perhaps the world’s leading expert on the Chinese judicial system, put it this way: “This statement is the most enormous ideological setback for decades of halting, uneven progress toward the creation of a professional, impartial judiciary.”
In short, because Party interference in the court system is increasing, Apple has an excellent chance in prevailing in its anti-monopoly suit in China.
And every American—even Apple shareholders, who also benefit from the protection of intellectual property—should be rooting for the other side.