‘If you do not divest from China because it will cost you too much money, your insincerity about “purpose” will be obvious…’
(Michael Barnes, Liberty Headlines) The investment behemoth BlackRock has no problem discriminating against American gun manufacturers and fossil-fuel companies, but the global financial services company looks the other way when it comes to doing business with communist China.
Citing appalling human-rights abuses and the Wuhan virus pandemic, a nonprofit ethics watchdog is now pressing Larry Fink, BlackRock’s chairman and CEO, to put his professed principles over politics.
But that may be too rich even for the New York City-based firm with $7.4 trillion in managed assets.
“Because BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager and you have championed the principle of divestment as a moral necessity, we ask that you divest your managed funds from the 137 Chinese companies listed on the three American exchanges,” Peter Flaherty, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, wrote in a letter to Fink on Wednesday.
“All are under the influence and ultimate control of the Communist Party of China,” he said. “At least 11 have 30% or more Chinese government ownership”
BlackRock is among the leading Democrat-aligned financial institutions that have actively discriminated against political targets in recent years.
A group of congressional Republicans from oil-producing states is currently asking President Donald Trump to stop the firm from denying services to coal, oil and gas companies, especially since it’s a Federal Reserve fiduciary involved in the distribution of the $2 trillion CARES Act.
BlackRock also offers investment strategies and exchange-traded funds that exclude American firearms producers and retailers.
But profiting from China exposes the company’s shameless moral relativism, according to Flaherty.
“As you have written, ‘a company cannot achieve long-term profits without embracing purpose and considering the needs of a broad range of stakeholders,’” he wrote.
“If you do not divest from China because it will cost you too much money, your insincerity about ‘purpose’ will be obvious,” Flaherty continued.
China brutally suppressed Hong Kong human rights protests last year and has imprisoned more than one million Muslim Uyghurs in re-education detention camps.
The Chinese government also imposes a totalitarian surveillance state on its 1.4 billion citizen population, along with Orwellian internet censorship and social-credit scoring.
China further unleashed the spread of the deadly Wuhan virus through a campaign of lies, secrets and propaganda. Trillions of dollars in economic losses have ensued, and hundreds of thousands have needlessly died.
Even more disturbing is the Chinese Communist Party’s policy of extrajudicial killings to supply its extensive human organ-harvesting program.
But all of that pales in comparison to domestic law-abiding gun and fossil fuel industries, apparently.
“Would not your customers—and our nation—be better served by investing in non-Chinese companies in regulated and transparent markets?” Flaherty asked.