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Companies are going to have to decide how important the Chinese market is or risk eroding the trust and good will for all of their other customers. You can’t st

Companies are going to have to decide how important the Chinese market is or risk eroding the trust and good will for all of their other customers. You can’t stand on the boat of democracy and the boat of a dictatorship t the same time.

esyir 7y ago
Sure you can. I think you're going to find that most people will go "oh those poor people in HK", then promptly go back to ignoring them in their purchase decisions. I have exceedingly little faith in consumers to inconvenience themselves to benefit others.
- remarkEon 7y ago
  This sentiment is absurd. I’m not going to let HK protests affect my spending. What, exactly, do you want me to do?
  - esyir 7y ago
    That was a response to the OP where: >Companies are going to have to decide how important the Chinese market is or risk eroding the trust and good will for all of their other customers. You can’t stand on the boat of democracy and the boat of a dictatorship at the same time. Emphasis on customers. Clearly, the customers have spoken on this, as well as any other atrocity that has happened in the past.
- aaomidi 7y ago
  If only we had an entity that could direct cultural change....
bww 7y ago
You may recall that Google dramatically pulled out of the mainland Chinese market about 10 years ago on the basis of exactly these principles (at least ostensibly). That didn’t exactly last. And China is a much more important market now than it was then. I wouldn’t hold out too much hope for a bunch of gazillion dollar companies to decide to favor principles over revenue anytime soon.
- entlfixsj 7y ago
  I think Netflix purposefully chose to not enter the Chinese market. I wonder how these companies that enter China would feel once they send communist party members to sit at management meetings. That’s known to happen during Mao era and I am certain some form of this will surface as the economy slows down.
  - alisonatwork 7y ago
    I don't think this would come as a surprise to any executive planning to grow their business in China. Large companies are already obliged to create an internal party unit[0]. It's factored in as part of the cost of doing business here. [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-congress-companies-idUSKCN1B40JU https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-congress-companies-...
- Laforet 7y ago
  Google merely closed their office in China and (passively) stopped offering their search and mail services. The money making part of Google (AdSense, Android) has been making a killing in China over the past decade. Despite the posturing on both sides, the relationship between Google and the Chinese regime is much cosier than people often assume.
  - mda 7y ago
    I don't think Chinese Regime and Google are any close to each other, your other remarks are also inaccurate.
    - Laforet 7y ago
      Which part of my post was inaccurate? Google still has access to the google.cn domain as well as several valid ICP licenses; a number of services (fonts, firebase and chrome/SDK downloads to name a few) are accessible from China hosted on a Google affiliated server in Beijing. AdWords have been thriving in China for a number of years and even the localised version of Google maps (ditu.google.cn) is still being maintained despite a nonexistent user base. None of this would have been possible if the government is actually hostile to Google in the way you believe.
flukus 7y ago
> You can’t stand on the boat of democracy and the boat of a dictatorship t the same time. Sure you can, any company that doesn't have dictatorial control of what software runs on devices they manufacture would not be in this situation in the first place.
rjf72 7y ago
This argument doesn't really work. I think the clearest example of this is Mars, Hershey, Nestle. These companies are, at the minimum, complicit in literal child slavery in the production of their chocolate. [1] This gets a piece run in the mainstream news once every couple of years or so. People express shock and awe, vow to boycott the companies, come up with some neat slogans or hashtags and all that. A few days after the next outrageous news piece comes up, it's a distant memory. And that's over something that's like comic book villain black and white bad, or in other words that there is going to be nothing but quite strong derision for that situation. Hershey and Nestle are showing record breaking stock prices. Mars is private, but it's safe to assume the same. The same is true of most topics now a days. The vast majority of activism is not driven by individual initiative, but by media attention. That means when the media spotlight fades, so does interest in the topic. In this particular case, the revelation of PRISM [2] (of which Apple, Google, and all major US tech providers are a part of) reshaped my entire perspective of the world and of these companies. Ask yourself why these companies would participate in such a program. For many, it's now just a distant memory - and you even have people now arguing that PRISM couldn't have been that bad. After all, the media isn't even talking about it anymore. [1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/business/hershey-nestle-mars-chocolate-child-labor-west-africa/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/business/hershe... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%...
- lern_too_spel 7y ago
  To understand why people didn't care about PRISM, you have to first understand what PRISM is. https://medium.com/@alecmuffett/how-to-talk-about-prism-and-not-get-entirely-blown-off-if-youre-an-activist-e2a79d2cd2ad https://medium.com/@alecmuffett/how-to-talk-about-prism-and-...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

esyir 7y ago

Sure you can. I think you're going to find that most people will go "oh those poor people in HK", then promptly go back to ignoring them in their purchase decisions. I have exceedingly little faith in consumers to inconvenience themselves to benefit others.

remarkEon 7y ago
This sentiment is absurd. I’m not going to let HK protests affect my spending. What, exactly, do you want me to do?
- esyir 7y ago
  That was a response to the OP where: >Companies are going to have to decide how important the Chinese market is or risk eroding the trust and good will for all of their other customers. You can’t stand on the boat of democracy and the boat of a dictatorship at the same time. Emphasis on customers. Clearly, the customers have spoken on this, as well as any other atrocity that has happened in the past.
aaomidi 7y ago
If only we had an entity that could direct cultural change....

bww 7y ago

You may recall that Google dramatically pulled out of the mainland Chinese market about 10 years ago on the basis of exactly these principles (at least ostensibly). That didn’t exactly last. And China is a much more important market now than it was then. I wouldn’t hold out too much hope for a bunch of gazillion dollar companies to decide to favor principles over revenue anytime soon.

entlfixsj 7y ago
I think Netflix purposefully chose to not enter the Chinese market. I wonder how these companies that enter China would feel once they send communist party members to sit at management meetings. That’s known to happen during Mao era and I am certain some form of this will surface as the economy slows down.
- alisonatwork 7y ago
  I don't think this would come as a surprise to any executive planning to grow their business in China. Large companies are already obliged to create an internal party unit[0]. It's factored in as part of the cost of doing business here. [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-congress-companies-idUSKCN1B40JU https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-congress-companies-...
Laforet 7y ago
Google merely closed their office in China and (passively) stopped offering their search and mail services. The money making part of Google (AdSense, Android) has been making a killing in China over the past decade. Despite the posturing on both sides, the relationship between Google and the Chinese regime is much cosier than people often assume.
- mda 7y ago
  I don't think Chinese Regime and Google are any close to each other, your other remarks are also inaccurate.
  - Laforet 7y ago
    Which part of my post was inaccurate? Google still has access to the google.cn domain as well as several valid ICP licenses; a number of services (fonts, firebase and chrome/SDK downloads to name a few) are accessible from China hosted on a Google affiliated server in Beijing. AdWords have been thriving in China for a number of years and even the localised version of Google maps (ditu.google.cn) is still being maintained despite a nonexistent user base. None of this would have been possible if the government is actually hostile to Google in the way you believe.

flukus 7y ago

> You can’t stand on the boat of democracy and the boat of a dictatorship t the same time. Sure you can, any company that doesn't have dictatorial control of what software runs on devices they manufacture would not be in this situation in the first place.

rjf72 7y ago

This argument doesn't really work. I think the clearest example of this is Mars, Hershey, Nestle. These companies are, at the minimum, complicit in literal child slavery in the production of their chocolate. [1] This gets a piece run in the mainstream news once every couple of years or so. People express shock and awe, vow to boycott the companies, come up with some neat slogans or hashtags and all that. A few days after the next outrageous news piece comes up, it's a distant memory. And that's over something that's like comic book villain black and white bad, or in other words that there is going to be nothing but quite strong derision for that situation. Hershey and Nestle are showing record breaking stock prices. Mars is private, but it's safe to assume the same. The same is true of most topics now a days. The vast majority of activism is not driven by individual initiative, but by media attention. That means when the media spotlight fades, so does interest in the topic. In this particular case, the revelation of PRISM [2] (of which Apple, Google, and all major US tech providers are a part of) reshaped my entire perspective of the world and of these companies. Ask yourself why these companies would participate in such a program. For many, it's now just a distant memory - and you even have people now arguing that PRISM couldn't have been that bad. After all, the media isn't even talking about it anymore. [1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/business/hershey-nestle-mars-chocolate-child-labor-west-africa/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/business/hershe... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%...

lern_too_spel 7y ago
To understand why people didn't care about PRISM, you have to first understand what PRISM is. https://medium.com/@alecmuffett/how-to-talk-about-prism-and-not-get-entirely-blown-off-if-youre-an-activist-e2a79d2cd2ad https://medium.com/@alecmuffett/how-to-talk-about-prism-and-...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]