Billionaire tech investor David Sacks recently summed up the present state of Communist Chinese intimidation of American businesses, sports leagues such as the NBA, and anyone else with commercial interests in China. He sees it getting worse, not better.
“The CCP [Chinese Communist Party] is essentially depriving Americans of their free speech rights—not in China, but on American soil—as a condition of doing business over there.”
Americans are now familiar with the sad spectacle of their own countrymen bowing to Chinese pressure publicly. We see it done by captains of industry, Wall Street’s largest firms, the most elite universities, sports heroes, cultural figures, and politicians alike. It has become so common that it is news when someone instead resists the pressure from the Chinese communist regime and suffers financially because of it.
Sacks is deeply concerned about China’s malevolent influence in the world. Not just the regime’s persecution of the Uyghurs, but their theft of American intellectual property and cyber espionage, their belligerent relations with their neighbors and treatment of dissidents, the “social credit system” they impose on their people and, of course, their actions related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Still, he understands the pressures Americans are subjected to by the regime.
“People’s willingness to speak out about these issues tends to be related to how much business they have in China,“ Sacks said. ”I have no business in China, so I feel fairly unencumbered in saying what I just said. But there are a lot of people who do business in China who just won’t speak out. Everyone understands that the quid pro quo of taking Chinese cash is that you never criticize them.”
Highlighted are detailed actions and pro-Beijing statements of financial giants such as Larry Fink and Ray Dalio, who run BlackRock and Bridgewater Associates, respectively. An entire chapter catalogs similar kowtowing from Big Tech by Silicon Valley’s wealthiest CEOs, including Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cooke, and Bill Gates. From political dynasties in the United States and Canada to philanthropists and Harvard professors, from sports stars to movie actors, Chinese money talks so loudly that it drowns out every other sound.
All of the large news outlets are part of corporations that owe large parts of their revenue streams to their business interests in China.
“News conglomerates do not want to cover bad news about China. But it’s not because of a grand conspiracy theory. It’s simply because they make so much money,” he said.
Indeed, it is hard to feel sorry for NBC’s sports broadcasting business, which has seen viewership of its exclusive Beijing Olympics coverage plummet by 50 percent because of various boycotts and ill feelings against the Chinese communist hosts, turncoat American athletes who are competing under the Chinese flag, and a visual spectacle that looks like something out of “The Hunger Games.”
Even smaller media outlets, such as The Atlantic Monthly and Axios, aren’t immune, he notes in his book. Both are owned by Laurene Powell Jobs, Steve Jobs’s widow, whose fortune came from Apple and Disney, two companies that owe a lot of their wealth to their business activities in China.
Michael Bloomberg, whose financial news empire has made him $50 billion, “has the most access [in China] of any major media conglomerate, and it’s totally at the will of Beijing’s propagandists,” Marlow said.
“Bloomberg News has to extend its contract every two years, so he goes over there to kiss the ring.”
As Sacks noted, he has no business interests in China and can risk speaking out. NBC and others whose corporate paymasters owe massive percentages of their annual sales revenue to Chinese indulgences are not so free. What they can excuse for the sake of not offending their Chinese hosts and benefactors, they excuse or minimize. What they can ignore, they ignore.
How much longer will our large media outlets ignore the growing threat Chinese influence poses to their core principles of presenting the truth without fear or favor?
