How the CCP Controls American Businesses in China

The J 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. NBA is huge in China. It's also, if you think about it from the NBA 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 lure, as well they should. And they do edit films to appease the standards of the Chinese party. Self censorship is part of the cost of doing business. Right. But there's certain things they do, like in Doctor Strange, the Tibetan master was replaced by 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 all the shit you said. Yeah, that too. But now this is really this will really seal it. OK, 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 US-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. 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. I 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 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 that so there's that company that was airing the Chinese 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. 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 it OK? Just for that, Nike's business was destroyed inside China. Propagating. So was it destroyed? They 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 the government says there's a boycott. There's a boycott. Right. And then your your your company can't sell anything in China. And that's 40 percent of your business. You're fucked. It'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 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. And which brings up another inescapable question, which is if Nike is 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 the parties 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. Catch new episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience for free only on Spotify. Watch back catalog JRE videos on Spotify, including clips easily, seamlessly switch between video and audio experience. On Spotify, you can listen to the JRE in the background while using other apps and can download episodes to save on data costs all for free. Spotify is absolutely free. 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