Monday, June 28, 2021

Nike CEO: "Nike is a brand...of China and for China"

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Ranking Republican Member of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes, said yesterday their investigations have found that China's malign influence is deepening across corporate America.

There is a growing concern in the US that Nike is dependent on Uyghur slave labor in China for Nike products.

In his attempt to convince Wall Street that everything is under control in China, Nike CEO Joe Donahoe told them this week that "Nike is a brand that is of China and for China."

Rep. Nunes says Americans have got to be informed because of the depth of China's control of corporate America.

Be informed, not misled.

"Nike is a brand that is of China and for China."

Who is the seller and who is the buyer?

Nike's CEO seems to be admitting that Nike exists to serve Communist China.

While the sneaker company is telling Wall Street and Main Street that it does not directly source its product material from the forced labor of the nearly 1 million Uyghur Muslims held in Xinjiang, China, many in America, and elsewhere, realize the country's supply chains are interwoven.

For example, the Uyghur's delivers 80% of China's cotton.

The human rights issues have become so concerning that our House of Representatives passed a bill, "The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act," which passed the House 406 to 3.

Nike partnered with Coca-Cola and Apple to lobby against the bill this past November.

The bill would have imposed various restrictions related to China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous region, including prohibiting certain imports from the area and imposing sanctions on those responsible for human rights violations there.

An Australian report last year said they had found that Nike, Apple, and 80 other corporations were "directly or indirectly benefiting from the abusive labor transfer programs."

Not only is China providing forced labor to increase Nike's profit margin, but China has also become a huge market for Nike.

Donahoe said, "We have been in China for over 40 years" and the "biggest asset is consumer equity."

An earnings report released last Thursday sits at $1.9 billion for a 3 month period. This is an increase of 17% over the same period last year.

Gary, I thought you were a capitalist.

I am, and I believe Jesus taught capitalism. Read carefully the parable of the ten talents.

Jesus also called out hypocrisy.

Here's the issue.

Nike and the others who are milking China, while China milks America, are hypocrites.

The same people who claim "equity" and "equality" and "human rights" prove by their actions, that in truth, they believe in neither.

Follow the money: 80% of Nike's donations ($604,000) last year went to Democrats, who are obsessed with "equity," but are now generally silent on this issue.

In fact, it's generally known that the reason the Democrats who voted for the "Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act" did so because they knew the Senate would likely not pass it.

Virtue signaling without consequences.

Several conservative news organizations tried to contact Nike about this issue and got no response.

House Intelligence Committee: "China's influence deepening across corporate America.

China has been indoctrinating our children through their public school campus-based "Confucius Institutes" for a number of years. I've written about it and talked about it on the radio. Because the light has been turned on to the issue, some schools have canceled the institutes on their campuses, but many remain.

Yesterday, Rep. Devin Nunes, the ranking Republican (CA) member on the House Intelligence Committee. told the press they have found China's malign influence deepening across corporate America, including in pharmaceutical, manufacturing, agriculture, entertainment, media, finance, sports, and technology.

The investigation has determined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ---via its control over the Chinese business firms---is manipulating and coercing US businesses into sharing key technologies with China and helping Beijing acquire sensitive intellectual property, which benefits China-based firms at the expense of US industry.

We all learned last year how much influence Communist China had over the NBA.

It also found that Chinese officials are giving guidance and direction to US businesses to influence their business operations, investment strategy, and strategic directions to the benefit of China.

And it found China employs a wide range of initiatives to influence and shape events and public opinion to undermine US national and economic security.

For example, China controls the US supply chain for some of our most important products, such as medical supplies, pharmaceuticals, and rare earth minerals.

The vulnerability is clear.

Why are we allowing ourselves to become the proverbial "frog in the kettle?"

The Committee concluded that "American business writ large is entangled in this effort, wittingly and unwittingly."

Takeaway

In 2017, George Barna, the leading Christian, conservative pollster, in my opinion, produced the most in-depth survey of competing worldviews I had seen.

While some of the numbers have worsened for believers, the trends are the same.

I strongly suggest you take 10 minutes and read the survey. It will be time well spent---for you and your children or grandchildren.

A quick look at some of the things Barna found:

  • Only 17% of Christians who consider their faith important and attend church regularly actually have a biblical worldview. 
  • 38% of practicing Christians are sympathetic to some Muslim teachings.
  • 61% agree with ideas rooted in New Spiritually, 54% resonate with postmodernist views, 36% accept ideas associated with Marxism, and 29% believe ideas based on secularism.

Barna takes a fairly deep look at the 4 worldviews most found among Christians who do not hold a biblical worldview.

Please take a closer look at the study.

Barna concludes, 

"The challenge with competing worldviews is that there are fragments of similarities to some Christian teachings, and some may recognize and latch onto those ideas, not realizing they are distortions of biblical truths. The call for the church, and its teachers and thinkers, is to help Christians dissect popular beliefs before allowing them allowing them to settle in their own ideology.

He quotes Hemphill: "Informed thinking is essential to developing and maintaining a healthy biblical worldview and faith as well as being able to  have a productive dialog with those who espouse other beliefs."

Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Prayerful.