WARC (May 6)
With plunging online sales, “Adidas and Nike are the latest western brands to feel the effects of China’s attacks on companies that criticize reported human rights abuses against Uyghurs in the country’s Xinjiang region.” There have also been calls for boycotts of H&M, Burberry and Uniqlo. “The reaction highlights the tension foreign brands face between speaking out, on the one hand, as their domestic customers increasingly demand, and, on the other, risking commercial damage by offending Beijing.”
Tags: Abuses, Adidas, Attacks, Boycotts, Brands, Burberry, China, Customers, H&M, Human rights, Nike, Online sales, Risk, Tension, Uniqlo, Uyghurs
Institutional Investor (December 1)
A crackdown in China on the securities industry “is shaking confidence.” The crackdown includes “the disappearance of a top brokerage executive” who many presume has been removed for questioning. These and other events are “fueling worries that President Xi Jinping’s crackdown on alleged abuses in the securities industry is turning into a campaign against political rivals.”
Tags: Abuses, Brokerage executive, China, Confidence, Crackdown, Disappearance, Political rivals, Securities industry, Xi Jinping
New York Times (May 6)
“In recent years, the number of patent-infringement lawsuits has increased sharply, by 25 percent just in 2013.” This explosion of frivolous lawsuits has “made a mockery of the protections the government grants to inventors.” Fortunately, Congress looks poised to pass legislation that could reduce some of the worst abuses.
Tags: Abuses, Congress, Frivolous, Government, Infringement, Inventors, Lawsuits, Legislation, Patents
Wall Street Journal (February 27)
“Tens of billions of dollars in U.S. market value have disappeared in recent years as more than 170 U.S.-listed Chinese companies have faced scrutiny for embezzlement, theft, misrepresentation and other alleged abuses.” Regrettably, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has caved-in on tighter inspections, deciding “not to suspend the Chinese audit firms or penalize them beyond token fines of $500,000.” As a result, U.S. investors “still lack basic protections against Chinese fraudsters” while Chinese authorities “remain as free as ever to stymie future investigations.” Furthermore, the SEC’s lack of spine increases “China’s rising confidence that it can play by its own rules.”
Tags: Abuses, Audit firms, Embezzlement, Inspections, Investors, Market value, Misrepresentation, Rules, SEC, Theft, U.S.-listed Chinese companies
Washington Post (February 22)
“There is a danger that as other pressing concerns about North Korea accumulate — nuclear weapons, missiles, cyberattacks — the world will lose interest in the human rights disaster.” Ideally, “North Korea’s leaders should be held accountable” and referred “to the International Criminal Court for investigation of crimes against humanity.” At present, however, a Security Council referral looks doomed to veto by China or Russia. For the time being, the UN must continue “to investigate human rights abuses in North Korea, with an eye toward identifying who in the regime’s leadership is responsible for the horrors so that they can eventually be held to account.”
Tags: Abuses, Accountable, China, Crimes against humanity, Cyberattacks, Disaster, Human rights, International Criminal Court, Investigation, Leaders, Missiles, North Korea, Nuclear weapons, Russia, Security Council, UN, Veto
Wall Street Journal (November 20)
“The United Nations rarely leads on human rights, so the General Assembly deserves credit for condemning North Korea on Tuesday. Its Human Rights Committee voted to endorse a report on the North’s abuses issued in February. That report uncovered stomach-turning evidence of atrocities, much of it based on eyewitness testimony.”
Tags: Abuses, Atrocities, Condemn, Eyewitnesses, General Assembly, Human rights, North Korea, U.N.
New York Times (March 23)
“It’s the one question about the 2008 financial crisis that people still ask me more than any other: Why have regulators done so little to rein in the credit rating agencies?” Despite abuses which helped create the sub-prime crisis and despite numerous resolutions to revise the regulatory environment for firms like S&P and Moody’s, little has been done. “Ratings still loom large, even after they were found to have been so disastrously inaccurate in 2008. It’s yet another example of the glacial pace of regulatory change.”
Tags: Abuses, Credit rating agencies, Financial Crisis, Moody's, Ratings, Regulators, S&P, Sub-prime crisis
