US Senator Marco Rubio calls Intel cowards for scrubbing remarks about Xinjiang and apologizing to China
- Reference: 1641947917
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/01/12/rubio_intel_xinjiang/
- Source link:
In an earlier [1]version of the letter, published on Intel’s website on December 23, the semiconductor giant reminded its suppliers to make sure they don’t use any labor nor source any goods or services from Xinjiang due to trade restrictions imposed by “multiple governments.”
By that, they mean restrictions placed by [2]the US government , among others, due to what more and more clearly appears to be rampant human-rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims in the region.
[3]
Netizens on Weibo, one of the biggest Chinese microblogging sites, slammed Intel over this letter, and sided with the Chinese government, which denies cracking down on or abusing the ethnic minority group. Many threatened to boycott Intel. The corporation apologized over the backlash and removed all mention of Xinjiang in its letter
[4]PDF
.[5]
[6]
Enter, Marco.
“Intel’s cowardice is yet another predictable consequence of economic reliance on China,” Senator Rubio [7]said in a statement on Monday. “Instead of humiliating apologies and self-censorship, companies should move their supply chains to countries that do not use slave labor or commit genocide.”
[8]
He also warned that if semiconductor companies “obscure the facts about US law just to appease the Chinese Communist Party,” they should not be able to receive any government funding under the CHIPS Act. The CHIPS Act passed in the Senate in June, last year, and proposes to spend $52bn to boost chip R&D and manufacturing in America as the global shortage in semiconductors continues to affect businesses across the world.
An Intel spokesperson declined to comment to The Register on Rubio’s statement. “With regard to the letter, we will continue to ensure that our global sourcing complies with applicable laws and regulations in the US and in other jurisdictions where we operate,” the spokesperson told us.
[9]Intel ‘regrets’ offending China with letter telling suppliers to avoid Xinjiang
[10]China puts Walmart in the naughty corner, citing 19 alleged cybersecurity 'violations'
[11]US grounds investors in Chinese drone maker DJI over 'Xinjiang human rights abuses'
[12]US Army journal's top paper from 2021 says Taiwan should destroy TSMC if China invades
Intel isn’t the only biz to land itself in hot water both back home and in China over Xinjiang. Walmart’s subsidiary Sam’s Club [13]was accused by Beijing of "stupidity and shorted-sightedness” after it was reported that the US retailer had pulled products sourced from Xinjiang, according to Reuters.
And Tesla was criticized by human-rights activists for opening a new showroom in the region. ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/23/intel_regrets_offending_china_with_xianjing_opinion/
[2] https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-business-china-boycotts-beijing-ac7dc12d2121a3057432d6ebb2b34147
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Yd5gdsqvag7GE@sTAQFhYQAAAI0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/supplier/governance/forms/documents/annual-supplier-letter-english.html
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Yd5gdsqvag7GE@sTAQFhYQAAAI0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Yd5gdsqvag7GE@sTAQFhYQAAAI0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?id=D0696334-4F97-413F-B7CB-E45AE5DF0625
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Yd5gdsqvag7GE@sTAQFhYQAAAI0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/23/intel_regrets_offending_china_with_xianjing_opinion/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/10/walmart_china_security/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/17/usa_bars_investment_in_eight_chinese_tech_companies/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/05/taiwan_should_destory_tsmc_paper/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/10/walmart_china_security/
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: What would happen if
Whilst I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiments, I must point out that you're perhaps being a little naïve if you think the CCP will pay a blind bit of attention to "pulled IP" or "revoked licenses". They've been stealing IP and trade/military secrets from the West on a vast scale for years; why would you think they give a fetid panda's kidney about our obsession with "intellectual property"?
Re: What would happen if
They wouldn't. But they might find it a lot more difficult to steal technology if everyone else also decided to ... strengthen ... their "great firewall" for them. It's a lot harder to find people willing to risk their corporeal existence breaking the law in a hostile foreign land than it is to take skr1pt kiddies off the streets, slap uniforms on them, and tell them to break into foreign computers. If that's not enough, I'll also point out that no country has any moral obligation to issue visas to Chinese nationals.
The proper counterargument isn't that an economic blockade and effective security measures can't make spying much harder. They can and would. It's that isolation of bad actors has not proven to be effective as a means of altering their bad behaviour. Probably the best example is the DPRK, which is about as much an international pariah as any country can be. Yet there's always someone who will keep such a bad actor in business, and wouldn't you know it, that's China. I guarantee there would be a couple dozen countries willing to give China whatever international cover it needs to bypass the economic blockade in exchange for something (*cough* Belt and Road *cough*). Sure, you can then extend it to all of them too, but that entire approach ultimately requires being able to definitively split the planet into two nonintersecting groups: one that absolutely approves of China and one that does not. I'll leave it to professional diplomats to laugh uproariously at the idea of achieving that kind of consensus. And even if you could, the group that does not has to be sufficiently small to change the CCP's behaviour. I guarantee they'd start a war rather than change one bloody thing about their behaviour.
Re: What would happen if
Amazon would go under because 95% of the trash it sells now is Chinese alphabet-soup brands.
I've basically stopped shopping on Amazon because I can't find anything decent with search any more.
At Gene Cash, re: Amazon.
You say that like it's a bad thing. =-)p
*COUGH*
Ok, snark aside, it would cripple the company & probably put a lot of their employees out of work, a massive unemployment surge our nation doesn't need at the moment, but given all the stories about Amazon workers forced to urinate in bottles because they can't take a potty break, worker deaths in foreign-country-located-wharehouses getting swept under the rug, yadda yadda yadda, I'm not sure that the closing of the company on grounds that they're inhumane is such a bad thing.
*Sigh*
What would happen if
Every nation other than China with citizens/resources located in China (or a China-controlled region) pulled said citizens/resources out until further notice?
Yes it would affect the global economy (because so much manufacturing is based in China), but it would also hurt China as demand for the goods/services sourced there suddenly evapourated like smoke in a stiff breeze.
Got a chip making plant there? Close it up, bring your non-Chinese citizens home, bring home all your IP, equipment, supplies, etc, and just refuse to do business there until further notice.
Using Chinese programmers to write code? Pull out all your IP, revoke their license to code on your behalf, & hire talent to do the job locally instead.
Using ultra cheap Chinese (slave?) labour to build your stuff? Close up shop in China, pull back all your IP, revoke their license to work on your behalf, & bring all your manufacturing back home.
What would such a massive vote of "We Do Not Approve Of Human Rights Violations" coupled with a serious economic kick in the trousers do to wake up the Chinese government?