Fox Business Network show host and a top Wall Street whisperer, Maria Bartiromo, takes on China in her latest book called “The Cost”, which will be released on October 27.
“I think right now the biggest challenge of what the U.S. is facing in terms of standing up to China is the corporate sector,” she told me.
She’s right, of course. They’re kind of picking sides. We’ve seen it.
Is it hard to imagine the provincial governors and members of the Chinese Communist Party gloating with the fact that Disney’s live action princess flick Mulan was at least partially filmed in Xinjiang? Did Disney executives not know that this large, western most province of China is also home to thousands of Uyghur Muslim men being held in what Beijing openly refers to as re-education camps? Seriously? For most of the Western world, it’s a human rights concern. For Disney, it’s a set location. China gets a chance to say to its people — if we were doing bad things in Xinjiang, would Disney really film there? Common sense might make you think: no, of course they wouldn’t.
“You’ve got corporations that see 1.2 billion people in China and those are many potential consumers for them,” she says. “China is aware of that market potential. You’re dealing with a communist country and it’s foreign to our approach to governance and business. But our companies made a deal: get access to the sheer volume of people there in exchange for playing by the CCPs rules, whatever those might be. That is a very dangerous position to be in, particularly as the U.S. government is now recognizing them as the single biggest threat the country faces.”