Official Apology from Trey Parker and Matt Stone

“Like the NBA, we welcome the Chinese censors into our homes and our hearts.  We too love money more than freedom and democracy. Xi doesn’t look like Winnie the Pooh at all.  Long live the Great Communist Party of China! May this autumn’s sorghum harvest be bountiful! We good now China?”

For the past twenty to thirty years, thousands of American and Western European international corporations have had to compromise abiding by Western democratic values and rights, those same values and rights that made them successful, to conduct business inside China and access the enormous Chinese domestic market.

From all appearances, these corporations have sought bottom line profit and top line revenue growth by doing business in China above basic human values of freedom of speech and the rule of law.

For decades, corporations have literally bent over backwards and several have performed ‘unnatural acts’ to appease the Chinese autocratic government officials. These corporations have overlooked draconian censorship, brutal repression, forced labor and re-education of minority ethnicities, and outright fraud to chase monetary gain in China.

No American or Western European corporation appears immune to seeking profit over values to conduct business in China. Google, one of America’s largest technology companies, appeared to ignore its own corporate values and offered a version of its search engine and services that conformed to the Communist autocratic government’s oppressive censorship policies. Only after Google employees threatened to strike and the American media shined light on the deal did Google abandon the effort.

Now, thanks to the NBA desire to expand in China and a team’s general manager’s tweet supporting the Hong Kong protestors, Chinese harsh censorship and irrational response by global norms to core American values and rights, freedom of speech and rule of law, are finally getting the media and public attention it deserves. With billions of dollars and international market growth at stake, NBA Commissioner, Adam Silver, is attempting to tightly walk a fine line between living by Western core values of freedom of speech while simultaneously preserving access to the lucrative Chinese domestic markets.

What lessons Americans should learns from the current controversy is that the Chinese Communist autocratic government ruthlessly censors speech, curbs individual freedom, runs roughshod over the Western standard rule of law and represses any entity, individual or corporate, that challenges or threatens its legitimacy or core principles.