Lessons learned from the Holocaust and U.S. Business Ethics 101 seem to be forgotten the instant American companies enter into China.
For decades business has flocked to China to take advantage of its cheap labor. China is a country that signed human rights and labor laws only to ignore them, and that announces that it has labor laws but then disregards them.
In China those whom the Chinese Communist regime views as "enemies of the State" are kept as unpaid slave labor. Who can compete against those with access to a vast supply of free labor?
More recently, some high-tech companies have learned there is big money to be made in assisting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in perfecting the means of tyranny, especially the ability to control all information.
The Holocaust and its Business Accomplices
The Third Reich utilized slave labor during the Holocaust years, and could not have accomplished its policy of extermination without the explicit and implicit help of local and international business. Business produced products for use in the Nazi genocide and used the victims of this genocide for its own purposes.
"Businessmen behaved in a decidedly unheroic manner during the Nazi era," said Jonathan Wiesen in his article "Fifty Years of Forgetting and Remembering" ( Dimensions, undated). "Most of them, especially leaders of larger companies, not only refrained from risking their lives to save Jews, but actually profited from the use of forced and slave labor, the 'Aryanization' of Jewish property, and the plundering of companies in Nazi-Occupied Europe… Greed drove all too many 'apolitical businessmen' to engage in odious conduct."
Companies that were actively participating in holocaust atrocities and their association with specific concentration camps are found on http://remember.org/ , including AEG, BMW, Shell, Daimler-Benz, Siemens, Ford, Heinkel, I.G. Farben Industries, Krupp, Telefunken, and Volkswagen.
Insurance companies turned over life, property and other forms of insurance to the Nazi regime, which cashed them in. A long list of insurance companies is detailed on http://www.insurance.wa.gov/ . Germany's Alliance, Italy's Generali, Switzerlands's Winterthur are just a few who succumbed to the Nazi regime's demands.
"…dignified professionals were Hitler's advance troops. Police officials disregarded their duty," says Edwin Black in his book "IBM and the Holocaust."
Black continues, "Lawyers perverted concepts of justice to create anti-Jewish laws. Doctors defiled the art of medicine… Scientists and engineers debased their higher calling to devise the instruments and rationales of destruction."
The world's media and governments remained silent and companies hid behind a mantle of corporate lawyers, accepting little or no guilt.
The world was horrified once the full truth became known and the world's citizens swore that another Holocaust would never happen again.
Companies that participated in the Holocaust were called to task after World War II (WWII). The price was heavy for some, but not for all. In any case, the price was not high enough.
The CCP's Ongoing Policy of Extermination
The CCP has a record unmatched in the twentieth century for slaughtering innocent people. Estimates of the number of their own citizens killed by the CCP are in the range of 80 to 100 million.
Those killed include intellectuals, small farmers, businessmen, Buddhists, Christians, at least 1/10 of the Tibetan people—anyone whom the CCP's leaders might imagine would oppose their rule.
The greatest bulk of this killing occurred in the years from 1949, the beginning of the CCP's rule, through 1976, the end of the Cultural Revolution. During those years Western businesses for the most part were not welcome in Mao's China, and their complicity in this massive slaughter was minimal.
After Mao's death, Deng Xiaoping led the CCP to open itself to Western business. Ever since, there has been a tendency among Western elites to want to believe that the CCP was changing, and that the wise policy was to "engage" with China. The thought that there were piles of money to be made in China made this policy seem all the more reasonable.
In July 1999, Jiang Zemin showed for all who cared to pay attention that not much had changed after all. He launched a campaign to "eradicate" the Falun Gong. This campaign has since become the model for ever more intense persecutions of house Christians and underground Catholics—and of anyone in China with independent faith.
On March 9, we learned how far this policy of eradication has gone. The existence of a concentration camp at a place called Sujiatun was revealed. At that camp, beginning in 2000, thousands of Falun Gong practitioners had their organs harvested while they were still alive.
Subsequent investigation has shown that transplant centers and hospitals throughout China, not just in the Sujiatun area, have been using Falun Gong practitioners imprisoned locally as a living organ bank.
A veteran military doctor told The Epoch Times there were 36 other camps like Sujiatun. At this time, no one knows the number who have been slaughtered for his or her organs, but given what we know today, the numbers appear to be very large.
Accomplices to Tyranny
The almost seven-year long persecution of Falun Gong, the intensifying persecution of other spiritual groups, and the recent revelations of death camps serving transplantation centers—none of these seems to have cooled the ardor of Western companies to do business in China.
Volkswagen, which was forced to make large restorations to survivors of the Nazi Holocaust, has not learned its lesson. Today, the Shanghai Volkswagen Co. Ltd. venture in China abides by the Chinese regime's discriminatory policy against Falun Gong—forbidden under international laws. Volkswagen China was called to task, but refuses to acknowledge it complicity.
The China Support Network transmitted to former Secretary of State Powell on March 11, 2004 a resolution concerning humans rights issues in China – "WHEREAS the Jiang regime has forced some multinational corporations, such as Volkswagen to become its accomplice to persecute Falun Gong practitioners by forcing their employees in China to give up their practice."
The World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong ( WOIPFG ) found evidence that The Sun-Ah Company of the U.S., a joint venture, gets its products from Henan Rebecca Hair Products, which is produced by slave laborers at Henan Province Shibalihe and Xuchang labor camps. American labor law states clearly that such products may not enter the United States—but they still do.
WOIPFG disclosed that the chairman of the board of Rebecca Hair Products, Inc., who is the general manager and distributor, resides in the US. Guard Shen Jianwei from No. 3 Labor Camp often said: 'A while back, when the labor camp was short of funding and was about to be shut down, many Falun Gong practitioners became available.'"
WOIPFG also claims that Beijing Mickey Toys Co. Ltd, Lanzhou Zhenglin Nongken Food Ltd., Jin Printing Co. Ltd., and Qiqihaer Siyou Chemical Industry Co. Ltd.—all companies that export their products to foreign countries—have contracted work out to China's slave labor camps.
These are just a few examples of the widespread use of slave labor by Western companies.
Cisco gave the CCP the ability to build the biggest censorship system the world has ever known. What is it used for? To track down those who are not kowtowing to the Chinese Communist Party line.
Motorola has provided China high-tech Advanced Location Tracing, which gives the Chinese regime the ability to find an individual hiding from the CCP's police.
"Reporters Without Borders" disclosed that Yahoo, as of date, has been instrumental in the jailing of three Chinese nationals. Yahoo provided information that led to: 1) the arrest of journalist Shi Tao on November 24, 2004, resulting in a 10-year prison term on April 30, 2003; 2) a four year sentence for Jiang Lijun, a cyber dissident, in November of 2003; and 3) an 8-year prison term for Li Zhi, a democracy advocate and former Chinese official, in December of 2003.
Google has given the Chinese regime the ability to filter out information that the regime does not want its citizens to know about.
Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Cisco and many others have willingly and knowingly supplied the Chinese regime with the tools to persecute its citizens, to keep the truth from its citizens, and to retain power.
These four companies were called to task during Congressional hearings; they were given a chance to step away from being corrupted. But, they have not publicly taken the step to walk away and stand tall.
None has learned from the aftermath of the Holocaust. What are they going to do when the Chinese regime falls and the Chinese people call them to account? What will they plead when the free people of China choose to hold a twenty-first century Nuremberg trial?
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