NEW YORK—Experts warned of human rights abuses in China and risks in dealing with its companies at a conference on April 25.
Roger W. Robinson, former director of International Economic Affairs for the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan, spoke at The Chinese Communist Party’s Unrestricted Economic Warfare Against America.
Robinson said two new major material risk categories should be focused on: national security-related risk; and human rights-related risk and abuses.
“It’s often the case that human rights abusers are often national security abusers, and the reverse is likewise true,” said Robinson.
Robinson pointed out that beyond the ethical values at stake, there is also the market perspective concerning terms and conditions. Chinese companies guilty of human rights abuses being publicly traded and hidden inside investment portfolios represent a large risk to share values and corporate reputations.
Full Disclosure
Robinson asserted that Chinese companies present a real problem and should be properly disclosed and exposed to prospective investors.“We don’t really have a way to know in today’s world, as to what is in our retirement accounts, and our mutual funds, no ones really doing a forensic check of where their money is being invested and how it’s being used,” said Robinson.
Robinson suggested the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and other regulators need to ensure these risks are properly disclosed.
“We need to know where our money is going and how it’s being used,” said Robinson.
Moral Issues
Former White House chief strategist and former senior counselor to President Trump, Stephen K. Bannon, and one of the founding members of the Committee on the Present Danger: China, shared his insight into the human rights violations still happening in China.“Beyond an economic issue here, there’s obviously a huge moral issue, and that moral issue is about the freedom of religion, and the freedom of expression in China,” said Bannon.
Bannon said that given the enslavement of the Chinese people by the Chinese communist regime, corporate America has got to stop financing and supporting it.
“History is going to judge us, we are going to be weighed and measured by what happened,” said Bannon.
“Right now we have a global financial system, a global economic system that allows this radical cadre in this totalitarian dictatorship in China to enslave their own people,” said Bannon.
Basic Freedoms
Bannon expressed that change would have to come from within, from the Chinese people, and that the CCP needs to stop oppressing its own people.“It’s the Westphalian system that works,“ said Bannon. ”It’s freedom that works. What better example do you need than Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and what the Chinese-Americans have done in the United States of America.”
“You give them Freedom, you give them freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of religion. They can accomplish anything. But if you finance a gulag, you’re going to get a gulag on a global scale, and trust me, the radical cadre, the CCP, that is their plan.”
Bannon said China has some of the world’s hardest working people and they deserve to be free from the oppression of the Chinese communist regime.
“I believe every day that the Chinese people are looking at the rest of [the] world and say, ‘Hey, why don’t we have the basic freedoms? We work hard, we produce, why don’t we have the basic freedoms that people in the west have, we deserve it.’ And I think that’s when you gonna see massive change in China.”
Gordon Chang, China expert and author of “The Coming Collapse of China” said the Chinese regime is waging a relentless war on faith.
“It’s all faiths, it’s not just Falun Gong, it’s not just Islam, it’s not just Christianity,” said Chang. “They’re even going after Buddhists, which is something which is almost unprecedented.”
“The United States should talk about this, and we should not be trading, we should not have cordial relations with a country that’s committing crimes against humanity,” said Chang.
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