Protest in Guangzhou: Why would you burn garbage?
Week Around the Ists
Interview: Coco Zhao, from jazz to M. Butterfly
Cinematheque: Mulan is finally Chinese again! (and other film news)
China and Coca-Cola
From the New York Times:
Police here have detained a former employee of a Coca-Cola bottling plant, whom they accused of corruption and bribery.The detention of the employee from the Shanghai Shen-Mei Beverage and Food Company, a bottling plant partly owned by Coca-Cola, was reported over the weekend by China's state-run news media, which said the employee took about $1.5 million in bribes.
We thought people would have learned to weed things kind of things out themselves by now, especially after four Rio Tinto foreign employees were arrested on similar sounding charges in July, suspiciously following Chinalco's failed purchase of the Australian mining giant. What do you know, there's a dead business deal here too: Coca-Cola, which has a large market share and ever growing presence in China, was recently prevented from purchasing Huiyuan, China's largest juice maker.
The government is adamant about foreign companies playing to China rules: anyone trying to access Facebook, Youtube, and a host of other social networking and blogging sites can vouch for this. Though the arrests satisfy government officials, it makes foreign investors wary, which could in turn be bad for business: there is little incentive to invest in a country if you have to worry about being arbitrarily arrested on vague charges.
It is unclear in whether the employee was Chinese or a foreigner, which could have more international fiasco implications. But what China has made clear is that companies need to start watching out - this is most likely only the beginning of China's anti-corruption crusade, and if you're a multinational, it's high-time to start checking that your employees are spanking clean.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
post to facebook
Though the arrests satisfy government officials, it makes foreign investors wary, which could in turn be bad for business: there is little incentive to invest in a country if you have to worry about being arbitrarily arrested on vague charges.
So, does that mean that you feel they have been unfairly charged, that any arrest of an employee at a foreign company is arbitrary, or both?
Seriously, before passing judgment on the Chinese legal system and turning this into an international event of your very own, perhaps you should have more research than a NY Times article as your sole source.
All this case, and the Rio case, shows is that China is looking more closely at corruption. There is nothing new here, and foreign companies should have been paying attention a long time ago either way.
Rio Tinto was about trade secret theft. That would have been prosecuted in the US as well just not as a criminal case. I agree with arg2arg there isn't anything new here - this crackdown has been going on for a couple of years. The only news here is that the company was related to Coca-Cola.
Youtube, Facebook and corruption cases aren't related. Facebook and Youtube are blocked because they allow user-generated content that is considered illegal in China. That's got nothing to do with taking bribes. Don't equate the two you just make yourself look uninformed.
I see that SHist is getting more stupid everyday. I used to work in Coca-Cola. I can tell you that Shenmei and Cola-Cola are two different entities. They are in the same building but on different floors and even the caterers are different. So now the case in in Shenmei, not Coca-Cola. What Shenmei does is to buy the syrup from Coca-Cola and made coke from it. It's like other bottlers in China. I so pity SHist that its writers are getting more ignorant. Picking up a piece of news and add some comments to it is what they do. That's so lame.