It started with organic farms. Now Chinese Communist Party officials in Beijing can enjoy their own Carrefour, the French supermarket which many Chinese citizens boycotted during the 2008 Olympic torch relays. Back then, a text message circulated accusing Carrefour of donating money to the Dalai Lama. Carrefour denied backing “illegal political organizations.” Now, the multinational is catering to the Party, literally.
The Chinese edition of Business Week quoted a Beijing Business Today report on Weibo, adding a quip and a spoof propaganda poster (pictured above):
businessweekchina: Carrefour has established a Party store and a Youth League committee, the first foreign retailer in China to do so. Since entering China in 1995, the company has come to realize the importance of establishing these organizations within the Party and Youth League in order to promote its corporate culture, bring staff closer together and push the company’s development… Dearest foreign companies, now do you get how to thrive in China?
彭 博商业周刊中文版 :北京家乐福成立家乐福党总支、团委,成中国第一家建党建团的外资零售企业。家乐福自1995年进入中国,如今,终于逐步了解到建立党团组织对提升企业文 化、密切员工关系、推动企业发展的重要作用……各位外企兄弟,在中国如何活得更好,看懂没有?北京商报http://t.cn/zWy4H0z
The websites of both Business Week and Bloomberg went down briefly on Friday after they published articles revealing the assets of Xi Jinping’s extended family. Business Week’s Weibo account has disappeared, and search results for 彭博 (péng bó), the first two characters of Business Week’s Weibo name, are blocked. Either the journal hastened its demise or had a last hoorah when it realized its impending doom.
Cartoonist Rebel Pepper turns his cynical eye to these strange bedfellows: