In the USA, government serves the needs of business. In China, business serves the strategic aims of government.
No foreign corporation is allowed to operate in China without conceding something of long-term benefit to China. That can be manufacturing operations in China, transfer of technological knowledge or a Chinese stake in the company’s ownership. It goes without saying that the CEOs do not criticize Chinese foreign policy.

Cartoon by Xu Jun for Economic Observer
Barry C. Lynn, writing in the November issue of Harper’s, said that some American corporate executives have even submitted to Communist-style self-criticism sessions, in which they volunteer confessions of misdeeds without being accused.
As China becomes more powerful, and the United States becomes more dependent on the Chinese for finance and for critical manufactured items, the leverage of Beijing over the United States becomes greater. Lynn explained the reasons:
First is the fact that so many U.S. companies now depend on China for the products they sell. For Walmart, it’s barbecue grills and shoes. For Apple, it’s assembly work. For Pfizer, it’s chemicals.
And while foreign companies have talked a lot about reducing their reliance on China, they nevertheless keep upping the ante, year after year. Just last April, General Motors announced plans to pour another $16 billion into China. In September, Dell pledged a whopping $125 billion over the next five years, with an ominous promise to “closely integrate Dell China strategies with [Chinese] national policies.”
A second reason corporations are so willing to accede to Chinese diktats is the allure of Chinese markets. For General Motors, China already accounts for roughly a third of the cars it sells. For Qualcomm, China accounts for roughly half its business. For Rio Tinto, China accounts for considerably more than half its output of iron ore.
Chinese sales of Apple’s iPhones topped U.S. sales in 2015 — and when global markets were tanking in late August, Tim Cook helped arrest a rout in the company’s stock by publicly assuring investors that the Cupertino giant had “continued to experience strong growth for our business in China through July and August.”
Source: Harper’s Magazine.
Chinese investors own the AMC Theater chain of movie theaters in the United States, and also are major investors in American-made movies. China also is the world’s largest market for Hollywood movies.
The result: Chinese are never the foreign villains in American movies—Russians, Arabs, Colombians, North Koreans, anybody but Chinese.
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