{"id":2317938,"date":"2024-08-02T00:55:02","date_gmt":"2024-08-02T04:55:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/nasdaq-exempts-chinese-from-wokism-it-forces-on-americans\/"},"modified":"2024-08-02T01:01:26","modified_gmt":"2024-08-02T05:01:26","slug":"nasdaq-exempts-chinese-from-wokism-it-forces-on-americans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/nasdaq-exempts-chinese-from-wokism-it-forces-on-americans\/","title":{"rendered":"Nasdaq Exempts Chinese From Wokism It Forces On Americans"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fnasdaq-exempts-chinese-from-wokism-it-forces-on-americans%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2317938&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The excerpt \u2063from &#8220;Go Woke, Go Broke:\u2064 The Inside Story of the Radicalization of\u2064 Corporate America&#8221; by Charles Gasparino critiques the apparent hypocrisy in corporate America&#8217;s adoption of ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) principles. It highlights\u2062 that while \u2064companies, particularly in the tech sector\u2063 listed on exchanges like Nasdaq, are pushed to disclose boardroom diversity and other social\u200d responsibility \u2064metrics, many forget or\u2064 overlook the \u2063practices of Chinese companies, which are often major violators of\u2063 ESG criteria. The excerpt points out that Nasdaq&#8217;s\u200d regulations seem to exempt Chinese firms despite their poor \u2063human rights and environmental records, arguing that financial\u2063 interests often take\u200c precedence over\u2064 ethical considerations.\u200b <\/p>\n<p>Gasparino\u2064 illustrates this discrepancy by referencing various corporations, such as Goldman\u200d Sachs, Disney, and\u2063 BlackRock, that espouse progressive\u2063 values in the U.S. but continue to engage with Chinese markets without holding those companies to the same standards. He further discusses the NBA&#8217;s relationship with China, suggesting that financial motives lead to silence on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/hamas-sympathizers-ramp-up-campaign-against-israel-with-left-wing-donor-army\/\" title=\"Hamas supporters intensify anti-Israel campaign with left-wing donor force\">pressing human rights issues<\/a>. the author questions the sincerity of corporate wokeness when \u2063it \u2063appears \u2063to bend under the pressure of profitability, \u2064especially regarding partnerships with oppressive regimes.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p><em>This is an adapted&nbsp;excerpt&nbsp;from &ldquo;<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hachettebookgroup.com\/titles\/charles-gasparino\/go-woke-go-broke\/9781546007418\/\"><em>Go Woke, Go Broke: The Inside Story of the Radicalization of Corporate America<\/em><\/a><em>&rdquo; (Center Street, August 6).<\/em> <em>Note: ESG is shorthand for investing principal that prioritizes environmental issues, social issues, and corporate governance).<\/em><\/p>\n<p>You could maybe, just maybe, stomach all the phony virtue signaling surrounding ESG from the woke capitalism crowd if they applied it equally to all public companies. They don&rsquo;t. Not even close.<\/p>\n<p>Take what&rsquo;s happening at the Nasdaq, a big stock exchange that caters to the tech industry. If you&rsquo;re a CEO of a company who wants his stock to trade seamlessly, you apply to &ldquo;list,&rdquo; or have it traded on a major stock exchange, like the New York Stock Exchange or the Nasdaq Stock Market, the two largest such venues. Meeting Nasdaq&rsquo;s so-called listing standards should be standard stuff like disclosure of profits, losses, and other logical corporate governance metrics to make sure the CEO isn&rsquo;t robbing the place blind.<\/p>\n<p>Not quite. In 2020, Nasdaq&rsquo;s obsession with ESG and wokeness grew to unfathomable levels. The exchange adopted a rule that all but set quotas in the corporate boardroom, forcing all listed companies to disclose boardroom diversity. Critics called it a public shaming exercise; companies are forced to &ldquo;explain why they do not have at least two diverse directors, including one who self-identifies as female and one who self-identifies as either an under-represented minority or LGBTQ.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Guess who&rsquo;s exempt from all of this? The Chinese. China&rsquo;s economy is on the verge of rivaling our own in size. Its companies list their shares on all the major exchanges, including the Nasdaq. Chinese companies are also some of the world&rsquo;s biggest polluters; they&rsquo;re controlled by one of the world&rsquo;s most repressive regimes, known as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). They would fail nearly every ESG metric if they were also held to them, but they&rsquo;re not, by Nasdaq or any other adherent to the dictates of corporate wokeness.<\/p>\n<p>I discovered this devious wrinkle in corporate progressivism a few years ago while covering the IPO of Alibaba, the China-based competitor to our online retailer Amazon. A real entrepreneur, Jack Ma created Alibaba in his Beijing apartment. But even self-made men in China answer to the commie apparatchiks at the CCP. <\/p>\n<p>In the IPO docs, there was a not-so-subtle risk factor about the CCP and its tendency to &ldquo;exercise significant control over China&rsquo;s economic growth&hellip;providing preferential treatment to particular industries and companies.&rdquo; Translated into English: If the CCP doesn&rsquo;t like someone at Alibaba, it&rsquo;s off to the gulag, and shareholders might suffer. That&rsquo;s kind of what happened to Ma, who disappeared for months after mildly rebuking the CCP.<\/p>\n<p>Yet Alibaba&rsquo;s ESG score didn&rsquo;t suffer. Boardroom politics in the woke era is a twisted phenomenon. It allows China Inc. to get rich while it oppresses the LGBTQ community on the mainland and persecutes (some would say commits genocide on) its Uyghur ethnic minority without Nasdaq demanding Uyghur board seats on listed Chinese companies. The reason? It has something to do with money. <\/p>\n<p>Nasdaq would lose potentially billions of dollars if these metrics were applied equally. So would Goldman Sachs. David Solomon&rsquo;s Goldman Sachs may channel wokeness at work and love investing according to ESG, but not enough to turn its back on underwriting the stocks of Chinese companies like the Alibaba IPO even if its founder eventually finds himself sitting in a cell.<\/p>\n<p>Disney also preaches some of the most woke politics from its boardroom and C-suites that filter into its programming and theme park experiences. And it also excuses China&rsquo;s human rights abuses as it seeks to expand in the mainland. Ditto for BlackRock, a leader in ESG on its US portfolio companies but that doesn&rsquo;t use ESG screens when buying Chinese stocks. To do so would piss off the Chinese government that approved BlackRock&rsquo;s recent foray into selling its funds to China&rsquo;s massive and growing investor class.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, BlackRock is the first US money manager to offer mutual funds to Chinese investors, and it certainly won&rsquo;t be the last. JP Morgan&rsquo;s CEO, Jamie Dimon, too loves to tout corporate wokeism, even taking what looked like a BLM-inspired knee during the 2020 social unrest. He also loves the Chinese market; JP Morgan is buying stakes in Chinese banks and opening branches. The firm also serves as an underwriter for Alibaba, also ignoring Jack Ma&rsquo;s plight. US tech giant Apple, from woke Silicon Valley, builds its iPhones there; EV sensation Tesla is saving the world, but has plants in China.<\/p>\n<p>Mark Cuban, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/new-york-times-reporter-claims-billionaire-tech-investor-used-the-r-word-gets-corrected-blames-everyone-else\/\" title=\"New York Times Reporter Claims Billionaire Tech Investor Used The R-Word, Gets Corrected, Blames Everyone Else\">billionaire tech entrepreneur<\/a> and until recently owner of a professional basketball team, attempts to make the case in this book that woke does sell; the younger generation is into social justice and products that reflect progressive politics. He says the NBA is all in on social justice. Its success in attracting a younger fan base that will soon dominate sales is proof no one is going broke on going woke.<\/p>\n<p>Aside from a lack of obvious evidence that woke sells to most Americans, let&rsquo;s explore the hypocrisy of the NBA&rsquo;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/black-lives-matter-activist-charged-with-anti-asian-hate-crime-after-posting-online-against-hate\/\" title=\"Black Lives Matter Activist Charged With Anti-Asian Hate Crime After Posting Online Against \u2018Hate\u2019\">progressive virtue signaling<\/a>. Until recently, Cuban was also the owner of the NBA&rsquo;s Dallas Mavericks. The NBA is the only professional sports league that&rsquo;s in business with the CCP to air games on the mainland. So much money is on the line for pro basketball that the NBA has been known to discipline any executive who speaks up against real oppression in China, the brutal crackdown on pro-Democracy protesters in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n<p>How&rsquo;s that for supporting social justice? I asked Adena Friedman, the CEO of Nasdaq and the author of those crazy listing rules, how all this makes sense. The morally corrupt CCP &mdash; the Chinese Communist Party &mdash; runs every Chinese company, even those listed in US exchanges. Will Nasdaq force Chinese companies to institute DEI and meet the same ESG standards she&rsquo;s demanding here in the United States? Her flacks told me progress is achieved incrementally; for now they&rsquo;re willing to accept two <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/after-backlash-over-call-to-limit-annoying-womens-speaking-time-tokyo-olympics-chief-resigns\/\" title=\"After Backlash Over Call To Limit \u2018Annoying\u2019 Women\u2019s \u2018Speaking Time,\u2019 Tokyo Olympics Chief Resigns\">female board members<\/a> on Chinese companies even if they&rsquo;re both hardcore commies.<\/p>\n<p>Okay, but my Wall Street sources say Friedman&rsquo;s new diversity rules aren&rsquo;t purely about achieving some sort of kumbaya moment; she&rsquo;s running cover for some powerful political players in the woke corporate movement. She is close to Gary Gensler, the SEC chair appointed by President Biden, who is leading an effort in Washington to push corporate America to the left, as we discuss in upcoming chapters.<\/p>\n<p>A former official in the Justice Department under George W. Bush, who also serves on corporate boards, tells me that Gensler is behind the Nasdaq effort because these so-called diverse corporate boards channel progressive politics into company policy. And it&rsquo;s working. Roughly since the time the Nasdaq rules took effect, the McKinsey corporate consulting firm says 70 percent of all directors appointed to corporate boards are no longer straight and white and male.<\/p>\n<p>That&rsquo;s one big reason DEI and ESG have become touchstones of corporate behavior: They&rsquo;re being enforced by woker and woker board members. These members owe their jobs to the preservation of the woke circus at some of the nation&rsquo;s largest companies.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Charles Gasparino  is a senior correspondent for FOX Business Network and author of &#8220;Go Woke, Go Broke: The Inside Story of the Radicalization of Corporate America.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a modified excerpt from &#8220;Go Woke, Go Broke: The Inside Story of the Radicalization of Corporate America&#8221; (Center Street, August 6). Note: ESG stands for investing principles that emphasize environmental concerns, social issues, and corporate governance. <\/p>\n<p>You might be able to tolerate the insincere virtue signaling related to ESG from proponents of woke capitalism if they applied it consistently across all public companies. However, that&#8217;s far from the case. <\/p>\n<p>Consider what&#8217;s happening at Nasdaq, a major stock exchange focused on technology firms. If you&#8217;re a CEO looking for your company&#8217;s stock to trade smoothly on prominent exchanges like Nasdaq or the New York Stock Exchange, you must apply for listing and meet certain standards. These standards should typically include basic disclosures about profits and losses as well as other reasonable corporate governance metrics to ensure that CEOs aren&#8217;t misappropriating funds.<\/p>\n<p>However, in 2020, Nasdaq&#8217;s fixation on ESG and wokeness escalated dramatically. The exchange implemented a rule effectively mandating diversity quotas in corporate boardrooms; all listed companies are now required to disclose their boardroom diversity statistics. Critics have labeled this initiative as a form of public shaming since companies must justify why they lack at least two diverse directors\u2014one identifying as female and another identifying as either an underrepresented minority or LGBTQ.<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly enough, Chinese companies are exempt from these requirements despite being some of the largest polluters globally and operating under one of the most oppressive regimes\u2014the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). If held accountable by these same ESG metrics enforced on others by Nasdaq or similar entities advocating corporate wokeness, many Chinese firms would fail miserably.<\/p>\n<p>I first noticed this troubling aspect of corporate progressivism while covering Alibaba&#8217;s IPO\u2014a competitor to Amazon based in China founded by entrepreneur Jack Ma in his Beijing apartment. Even successful entrepreneurs like Ma must answer to CCP officials; IPO documents included warnings about CCP control over economic growth and preferential treatment towards certain industries\u2014essentially indicating that dissent could lead to severe consequences for both individuals and shareholders.<\/p>\n<p>Despite these risks associated with Alibaba\u2019s operations under CCP oversight\u2014including Ma\u2019s disappearance after criticizing the government\u2014Alibaba&#8217;s ESG score remained unaffected. This reflects how boardroom dynamics have become distorted during this era; while China thrives economically despite its human rights abuses against groups like LGBTQ individuals and Uyghurs without facing scrutiny from Nasdaq regarding board representation for those communities.<\/p>\n<p>The reason behind this double standard? Money plays a significant role here; applying such metrics uniformly could cost Nasdaq billions\u2014and similarly impact financial institutions like Goldman Sachs which continues underwriting stocks for Chinese firms regardless of their human rights records.<\/p>\n<p>Disney also promotes progressive values through its leadership while overlooking China&#8217;s human rights violations in pursuit of expansion there\u2014a pattern mirrored by BlackRock which champions ESG principles domestically but avoids applying them when investing in China due to potential backlash from authorities there.<\/p>\n<p>BlackRock has become the first U.S.-based asset manager offering mutual funds directly targeting Chinese investors\u2014a move likely followed by others such as JP Morgan whose CEO Jamie Dimon publicly supports social justice initiatives yet simultaneously invests heavily within China&#8217;s market landscape including partnerships with local banks\u2014all while ignoring issues faced by figures like Jack Ma.<\/p>\n<p>Mark Cuban argues that embracing woke culture resonates with younger consumers who prioritize social justice\u2014but evidence supporting widespread acceptance remains scarce when examining leagues such as NBA which collaborates closely with CCP-controlled media outlets despite punishing executives who speak out against oppression occurring within China itself.<\/p>\n<p>When I questioned Adena Friedman\u2014the CEO behind those controversial listing rules\u2014about how her policies align given that every company listed under her purview operates within an authoritarian regime she stated progress occurs incrementally suggesting current allowances may suffice even if they fall short ethically speaking regarding true diversity representation among boards comprising members loyal primarily towards maintaining existing power structures rather than genuine inclusivity efforts aimed at addressing systemic inequalities present today across various sectors including finance where DEI initiatives continue gaining traction largely due political influences stemming directly back into Washington D.C.&#8217;s corridors where figures aligned closely alongside Biden administration push agendas favoring leftist ideologies permeating throughout American corporations increasingly reliant upon compliance measures dictated externally rather than internally driven change fostering authentic accountability mechanisms necessary ensuring equitable treatment afforded equally irrespective background identity characteristics defining individual experiences navigating complex socio-economic landscapes shaping contemporary realities faced daily millions worldwide striving achieve success amidst adversity encountered along way toward realizing dreams aspirations held dear each person journeying forward together united purpose seeking create better future generations yet come ahead!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3337,"featured_media":2317939,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/wall-street-girl.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[4501,15946,36969],"class_list":["post-2317938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist","tag-china","tag-nasdaq","tag-wokism"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/wall-street-girl.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2317938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3337"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2317938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2317938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2317939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2317938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2317938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2317938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}