Name: How the CCP Controls American Businesses in China
Uploaded: 2021-04-27T17:17:37.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'How the CCP Controls American Businesses in China' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-04-27. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'How the CCP Controls American Businesses in China' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-04-27. Transcript available.

But my point is that, you know, that's how the CCP operates.
They will ruin your industry, your business, for the slightest, the slightest
offense.
This happened two weeks ago with H&M and Nike.
And it's because the business is tied to China, because China does do business
with the NBA.
Huge business.
Huge business.
Huge business.
And you think that this is—is it because China enjoys having the NBA as an
entertainment entity, or is it—
Chinese people love the NBA.
That's what it is?
The NBA is huge in China.
It's also, if you think about it from the NBA's perspective, that's their
growth.
That's their future.
Right.
You know, that's their biggest growing market for everything, from jerseys to
games to you name it.
And with a lot of sports, that's the case, too.
And with Hollywood, and with the stock markets, and with Silicon Valley tech
companies, and with American universities, all the sectors of American society,
see the Chinese economic market as a huge lord.
As well, they should.
And they do edit films to appease the standards of the Chinese party.
Self-censorship is part of—is the cost of doing business.
Right.
But there's certain things they do.
Like in Doctor Strange, the Tibetan master was replaced by an Anglo-Saxon woman.
This is my Tibetan face mask.
And now you will never be—this episode will never be aired inside mainland
China.
Did I just—
Just now?
Well, I think it's probably already not going to be aired because of all the
shit you said.
Yeah, that too.
But now this will really seal it.
Okay?
And good.
You know what I mean?
That's not to say we shouldn't engage the Chinese people.
We need exchanges.
We need to have business there.
And this is another sort of conundrum of the U.S.-China relationship that I try
to take a stab at my book, in my book, which is that, you know, we have to
engage with the Chinese people.
We have to have—we can't decouple our economies.
We can't live in two different worlds forever.
It's not going to work.
Right.
But we have to find a way to live with China, and we have to convince the
Chinese government to find a way to live with us in a way that doesn't
compromise our security and our prosperity and our public health.
In other words, you know, while we want—we would love—it's not about regime
change.
It's not about a Cold War.
These are sort of like bumper stickers that people throw out to dissuade people
from having an honest conversation about how to deal with a Chinese Communist
Party that is becoming increasingly problematic in ways that affect our lives.
And what I'm trying to say is that, you know, we have to be clear-eyed that,
you know, this is not about China or the Chinese people.
This is about the party.
This is the way the party operates.
Do you think that—so that company that was airing the NBA games, they're
making a lot of money off of that.
They didn't want to stop airing the NBA games.
They had to do that because the party said so.
When Nike—what was it?
What did H&M do?
They put up a statement questioning whether or not the cotton they were getting
from Xinjiang was made with forced slave labor.
Just like, hey, we're going to look into it.
For that one statement, their entire business in China was crushed.
Okay.
Nike, same thing.
For years, they resisted.
These companies, again, they're in a tough position.
I get it.
Hey, the cotton that you're sending us, is that—was that picked by forced
labor slaves?
Like, are we allowed to ask?
Is that okay?
Just for that, Nike's business was destroyed inside China.
Propaganda campaign.
How so was it destroyed?
They literally create a—well, they do boycotts.
And again, it's not like here where, like, you can boycott something, but you
have to convince people.
There, it's like if the government says there's a boycott, there's a boycott.
Right?
And then, your company can't sell anything in China, and that's 40% of your
business, you're
fucked.
That's a pretty big incentive, right?
And none of these companies are powerful enough to stand up to the CCP on their
own, which is
why I think they have to work with the U.S. government in some sort of way, but
that's not really going on, because politicians just want to dunk on the
companies, or they want to criticize them for not doing the right thing.
But there's no positive incentives to say to the NBA, hey, listen, why don't we
get together
on this thing, and we'll use our diplomatic pressure and our diplomatic tools
to make sure
that American companies and industries don't get punished by the party for
bullshit, like
a tweet.
But we're not sophisticated enough in our discussion of China or in our
government response to China
to actually make that happen, but I think that's basically where we have to go.
Which brings up another inescapable question, which is, if Nike's using slave
labor for their
shoes, why are sneakers so expensive?
What's the overhead?
It's a very good question.
How are sneakers $150?
But anyway, that's neither here nor there.
What would they cost if you paid people well?
Exactly.
Yeah.
And what's happening?
Is it just greed?
Yeah.
Massive profit margins?
Yeah.
So, anyway, this is a long way of saying that the parties ... To understand
China, you have
to understand that the party's in control of everything, and that dealing with
that is just the
way things are now.
And that doesn't mean that we have to have a Cold War or that we have to decouple
from
China.
It just means we have to figure out a new way to first try to convince them not
to do the
worst things, and then second, to protect ourselves if they insist.
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