With an eye on public and media perception, corporate America was quick to signal to the world that it disapproved of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with many companies altering, suspending or cutting their business ties to Vladimir Putin’s country altogether.
“Russia is bad. Ukraine is good. We’re pure of heart,” these companies basically declared in their public statements. It’s another way of virtue signaling about how “woke” they are against the backdrop of a potential world war.
On the one hand, discontinuing business inside a nation committing horrible crimes against humanity is a noble message, but on the other hand, these companies continue to do business with another country that has been unapologetically committing horrible crimes against humanity for years.
Within the last few years, the Chinese government has committed what former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and now the Biden administration, have described as genocide against the Uyghurs and other Muslim populations that live within the Xinjiang region of China. The regime has imprisoned, tortured and sterilized members of this community while forcing them into reeducation camps and hard labor.
The region is significant to many corporations because “Xinjiang produces vast amounts of raw materials like cotton, coal, sugar, tomatoes and polysilicon, and supplies workers for China’s apparel and footwear factories,” according to The New York Times. So, rather than issue press releases and press conferences denouncing China, corporate America continues quietly doing business in the ground zero of human rights abuses.
Coca-Cola sources sugar from Xinjiang, and Nike has reportedly had Uyghurs make shoes in its factory within the region. These two companies also lobbied against Sen. Marco Rubio’s Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which prohibits products made using forced labor from Xinjiang from being admitted into the United States.
The difference between Xinjiang and Ukraine is that one is the target of the media and the outrage mob, and one is not. Are these companies truly standing up for human rights or are they are standing up for their image in the media’s eyes?
Last week, reporting from The Wall Street Journal indicated that the hypocrisy emanating from Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, is even more flagrant.
Musk has recently drawn applause for his tough talk on Russia and for sending Starlink satellites into orbit so Ukraine can receive additional internet service, which Russia is trying to disrupt. That is indeed praiseworthy, but unfortunately it ends there. Just this year, Musk’s company Tesla opened a showroom in the Xinjiang region, and lawmakers are currently investigating whether SpaceX — which is a national security contractor for the U.S. government — has any direct or indirect links to China.
Standing up against human rights violations takes courage. The selective outrage demonstrated so far by woke U.S. corporations signals that human rights too often take a backseat to fattening the bottom line.
Corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to protect and increase their revenue, but human dignity and life should never be the price paid to achieve those ends. Condemning Russian atrocities while turning a blind eye to Chinese genocide to improve the bottom line is the height of hypocrisy. American consumers who buy products from these companies participate in this inhumanity to man.
Rick Santorum is a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania.