Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Marriott refused to host Uyghur conference, citing “political neutrality”

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 129 posts

Re: Marriott refused to host Uyghur conference, citing “political neutrality”

#21

Post by 323 »

AlexandrB wrote: post #17
323 wrote: post #4

More evidence that China's arm reaches quite far, including inside the West. Because China is willing to play dirty. If they hosted it, they would see Marriot executives arrested for "corruption", or Marriot hotels closed for "environmental damage" or similar things, like how they arrested two innocent Canadians as retaliation for the Canadian arrest of the Huawei executive. This is why Nike, NBA, Hollywood, ... bow…

I'm not a fan of China myself, but there's some evidence[1] that the two Canadians arrested were, in fact, spies. Personally, I'm not sure what to think. But tweets like this from CSIS[2] are certainly suggestive when viewed in a certain light. [1] https://canadianpatriot.org/2021/09/29/michael-kovrig-and-sp... [2] https://twitter.com/csiscanada/status/1441576564374769665

Article written by:

> Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, a socialist, anti-imperialist news site founded in 2019. He has written about Canadian imperialism, federal politics, and left-wing resistance to colonialism across the world.

Site mission:

> With the emergence of China’s New Silk Road (One Belt and One Road Initiative) as a force for global progress, poverty eradication, and peace, Canada has been confronted with an existential choice: Either continue to abide by the rule of monetarism, post-industrialism and war which have become signature features of the Anglo-American system dominant since World War two and run through the City of London and Wall Street, or embark upon a new mission of “win-win cooperation”, respect for the sovereignty of each nation while working in harmony with a community of share interest vectored around long term goals, great infrastructure programs and scientific discovery. This latter system is empowered by the force of new institutions such as the BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and Eurasian Economic Union. New credit generating institutions have been created to advance the expanded New Silk Road vision have come online such as the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the New Development Bank and the Silk Road Investment Fund to name a few.

Prasing Donald Trump approach to Russian and China:

> European nations are now deliberating whether they should continue to sit in the failed Euro cage, or embark on this project which openly welcomes all sovereign countries as partners in development. Donald Trump’s United States, having broken with the Neo-Conservative paradigm of war with China and Russia, also increasingly moves towards a new collaborative relationship with Eurasia and the New Silk Road. The question is what will Canada do in the face of this historic opportunity?

Re: Marriott refused to host Uyghur conference, citing “political neutrality”

#22

Post by enriquto »

julianlam wrote: post #3

Marriott decided to avoid poking the bear by stepping on the proverbial mouse. From a business perspective, it makes perfect sense, but moralistically, it does not. It is very disappointing that even I, as an Asian individual living in Canada, am disincentivized from expressing even my own opinion on China and HK/Taiwan, etc. due to the perceived threat of "consequences" from a government whose reach I cannot easily…

> From a business perspective

And that is our fault, to a great extent.

By "we", here I mean citizens of western countries that put up with this bullshit. When one of "our" companies engages in this shameful authoritarian appeasement we should boycott them to oblivion. If we fail to do so, we are enabling this behavior.

There's not much that we can do about human rights abuses in other countries. But there's a lot that we can do in our own countries to local companies that participate or validate the abusers. In that particular case, it would be feasible for Austrian people to stop all Marriott operations on the whole country, with a targeted human-rights campaign.

Re: Marriott refused to host Uyghur conference, citing “political neutrality”

#23

Post by whatever1 »

People are voting with their cash, and we love companies that make chinese products. For people the only thing that matters is the price tag.

And companies know that, this is why they poured trillions of dollars of investments in an authoritarian regime. They could had invested in any democratic country that respects human rights with labor and environmental laws, but it would not give them the best bang for their buck.

Companies are ran as Monarchies anyway, so authoritative regimes seem better fit for them.

Re: Marriott refused to host Uyghur conference, citing “political neutrality”

#24

Post by jollybean »

Collectively, the West is much more powerful than China, but nobody in the West is nearly as powerful as Xi.

In that fragmentation, he can gain considerable leverage like this, without even having to say a word.

One thing that might help even larger businesses is for government to pass legislation banning this kind of activity, i.e. making judgements on who can attend or not, or at very least, passing it off to the local officials.

That way, Marriott can say 'Sorry Xi, our hands our tied, we had to let them have their conference, take it up with Biden or Merkel'.

Re: Marriott refused to host Uyghur conference, citing “political neutrality”

#25

Post by poszlem »

jaywalk wrote: post #14

I wonder how long it took to come up with the phrase "political neutrality" to explain this, seeing as it's literally the exact opposite of that. To be fair to Marriott, they are saying it was a local hotel management decision and not a corporate decision, and that their corporate policies would not have restricted this conference. Remember, Marriott doesn't actually own or control (the vast majority of) hotels with…

I have no idea why you are being downvoted, since political neutrality for a hotel should mean - we host everybody no matter their politics. They are doing the opposite of what they claimed to be doing.

Re: Marriott refused to host Uyghur conference, citing “political neutrality”

#26

Post by poszlem »

xorcist wrote: post #9

Calling something a "policical issue" is itself political. It's like not wanting to acknowledge climate change because of "neutrality". There is no clearer way to broadcast a political opinion. Marrott has taken a stance here, just not the respecting civil rights.

Calling something a political issue is not political but factual. I think they absolutely should host that conference, but let's not do the tired "everything is political" thing again lest we end up with the:

“You talk to older people and they’re like, ‘Dude we sell tomato sauce, we don’t sell politics," one millennial entrepreneur told me. “Then you have younger people being like, ‘These are political tomatoes. This is political tomato sauce.'" https://twitter.com/emmabgo/status/1453720130412707849

Everything is political and nothing is political. Only the dose makes something political.

Re: Marriott refused to host Uyghur conference, citing “political neutrality”

#27

Post by majou »

simonh wrote: post #20
julianlam wrote: post #3

Marriott decided to avoid poking the bear by stepping on the proverbial mouse. From a business perspective, it makes perfect sense, but moralistically, it does not. It is very disappointing that even I, as an Asian individual living in Canada, am disincentivized from expressing even my own opinion on China and HK/Taiwan, etc. due to the perceived threat of "consequences" from a government whose reach I cannot easily…

The management of this Marriot Hotel did yes, but it's encouraging that Marriot's corporate management immediately overruled the Hotel on this and apologised to the group. Marriot do have a spotty history on such issues, but I think we should commend them when they attempt to do the right thing. Yes this shouldn't have happened in the first place, but given that it did they do seem to be doing their best to make it r…

Thanks.

It's easy to give into a pessimistic spiral; I always wanted these kinds of issues to become well-known, but it seems like the response is often some kind of "yeah, figures.", foregoing the conclusion.

In a similar, but lesser vein; John Cena's apology video didn't once mention what he was apologizing for, and still got lots of flak from mainland Chinese because of that. It was plain to everyone involved what the video was aimed to do, but it's the kind of fence-walking that we miss.

Re: Marriott refused to host Uyghur conference, citing “political neutrality”

#28

Post by scilro »

The World Uyghur Congress is not some politically neutral group made up of concerned immigrants and activists. It has US state backing and intelligence connections.

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/05/world-uyghur-congress-us-...

Whether you are convinced by the allegations they have made against the Chinese government or not, it's not inaccurate to call it a political entity. Its name is a bit misleading and makes one think that it represents members of this ethnic group around the world.

Re: Marriott refused to host Uyghur conference, citing “political neutrality”

#29

Post by chamsom »

AlexandrB wrote: post #17
323 wrote: post #4

More evidence that China's arm reaches quite far, including inside the West. Because China is willing to play dirty. If they hosted it, they would see Marriot executives arrested for "corruption", or Marriot hotels closed for "environmental damage" or similar things, like how they arrested two innocent Canadians as retaliation for the Canadian arrest of the Huawei executive. This is why Nike, NBA, Hollywood, ... bow…

I'm not a fan of China myself, but there's some evidence[1] that the two Canadians arrested were, in fact, spies. Personally, I'm not sure what to think. But tweets like this from CSIS[2] are certainly suggestive when viewed in a certain light. [1] https://canadianpatriot.org/2021/09/29/michael-kovrig-and-sp... [2] https://twitter.com/csiscanada/status/1441576564374769665

It says a lot that whenever someone presents a new idea that challenges existing views of international issues, we have to remind other posters of our personal alignment against the country on the other side of the fence.

It's okay to try to understand the world beyond conventional discourse. No one should be afraid of analyzing an issue with skepticism.

Re: Marriott refused to host Uyghur conference, citing “political neutrality”

#30

Post by rib3ye »

killjoywashere wrote: post #16

"Only Nixon could open China". Yes, let's send pallets of cash to a communist country in exchange for plastic toys and other end-manufactured goods. This was exploitation of global inequality was only ever going to help the billionaires.

Amazing how quickly people forgot about the existence of the Cold War.
Post reply on HN