The Price of Profits

In the new congressional report from the U.S. House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the bipartisan legislative committee members identified at least 63 Chinese companies that have received more than $6.5 billion in investments from U.S. sources. These companies were already blacklisted or red-flagged by the U.S. government.  

The vast majority of these funds are from investments overseen by U.S. asset management firms in market indexes. American fund managers often claim that they do not know where the dollars are being invested on the ground. Nevertheless, giants like MSCI and BlackRock, which invested heavily (in the billions of dollars) in companies complicit with human rights abuses, need to do a better job of researching where retirement pensions and other U.S. citizens’ funds end up.

The congressional committee is focusing attention on how U.S. money bolsters America’s greatest strategic competitor that is also an ‘adversary.’ Another purpose of the Select Committee on Strategic Competition is to identify how American funds are giving an advantage to Beijing while the Chinese Communist Party continues to violate basic human rights.

As the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC) has demonstrated through the publication of the Xinjiang Police Files, Beijing is targeting the Uyghur Muslim minority for elimination by attacking all aspects of their intellectual, spiritual, and cultural identity, including through imprisonment, sexual assault, forced sterilization, murder, as well as forced labor, and forced re-education of children and adults. As the research by the Australian Government, U.S. entities, and others have made clear, China’s campaign of forced labor and mass internment is directed by the communist Chinese government. What has resulted is the production of low-cost agricultural and consumer goods, whether from the huge cotton fields of Xinjiang, or in manufacturing of other goods sold on the global market—such as Volkswagen vehicles.

The congressional committee report highlights the significant flow of American dollars fueling the CCP’s regime, which perpetuates forced labor in China. It stresses the crucial role of U.S. capital in strengthening the CCP’s authoritarian rule and facilitating human rights violations. This underscores the pressing need for Congress and regulatory bodies to intervene, ensuring that American investments uphold ethical standards and national security interests, rather than aiding entities involved in human rights abuses, such as the forced labor of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. How much longer will investors turn a blind eye to China’s atrocities while supporting them financially.

Dr. Eric Patterson is the President and CEO of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. 

Photo: Wall Street – New York Stock Exchange via Carlos Delgado under CC-BY-SA