Regular Contributor - A Radical Centrist posts on the Olympics -
All this talk of boycotting the Olympics is, well, distracting from the point really. In the past the end result has never been a real impact on the nation in question, but always on the athletes. It is China, not the Olympics we should be talking about.
Okay, so the athletes in the Olympics are not just “amateurs” anymore. Many of them will and have found recognition elsewhere. But most of them will get one shot at being on the world stage as one of the, if not the, best in their sport.
Let’s start sending a message to China. Regardless of your position on Tibet (me, I tend to sympathize with the Tibetans) China could have avoided this row during all of the international scrutiny. The leadership there could easily have found a way to calm the Tibet issue for a couple of months and get past the Olympics without a real fuss. But they chose a typical totalitarian regime response and now blame Tibetans and Buddhists for damaging the reputation of the country and sabotaging the games.
Here is my centrist take on the whole thing. First picketing and demonstrating might get you on the 5 o’clock news in your town but won’t make a bit of difference. Second, boycotting the games will only hurt the athletes. Third personally boycotting the games is silly, how many of you were planning to fly to Beijing?
If you want to send a message, if you want to make a difference, boycott the sponsors and the suppliers. Take money from them. It’s too late to keep them for paying for the rights and getting the licenses needed for doing business in Beijing. But if you send them a financial message, impact their bottom line enough, they will stop doing business there, or at least will advocate on behalf of human rights and that will make some, even if not much, difference to China. I know it helped a little in South Africa in 1980’s. Coke lost a lot of market share over apartheid.
To that end here is a list of the companies you most likely will be able to boycott (there are others but I can’t get my keyboard to type Chinese characters, and most of us will not be traveling to China so won’t have a chance to not use those companies):
Coca-Cola (RC gets new customers)
GE
Johnson & Johnson
Kodak
Lenovo (the Chinese state owned firm that bought IBM’s PC division)
Manulife
McDonald’s
Omega (guess I’ll have to get that Rolex now!)
Panasonic
Samsung
Visa (Master Card and American Express could really do well on this one)
Adidas
Volkswagen (too bad too, they are about to make a diesel hybrid that gets 79.9 mpg!)
UPS
Budwieser
Snickers
Staples
PriceWaterHouseCoopers
If the US lawmakers and presidential hopefuls want to make a difference maybe they should boycott these companies that are helping China financially, and profiting off of a China that is oppressive.
Just a thought.
ARC
1 comment:
Boycott China & the Games
Yes, boycott China, not the athletes, by boycotting the sponsors, if you wish.
But realize something first. Boycotting the sponsors affects them only in the term after the Olympic Games. China gets what they wanted, and wins.
If your aim is to boycott China, then by all means do it, by boycotting the games. This won't hurt the athletes. Their accomplishments will not disappear, the sports agents will still pay attention, and so will the sponsors looking for the next Tiger Woods (good luck).
By boycotting the games you send a direct message to China, that no one likes what they're doing. If there is no eager market for the games, they lose. Only by the games being a failure will the games be a failure. The balance sheets of the sponsors six months after the games won't ever affect China.
Also realize, by "taking money from them" (the sponsors), who are you hurting? Those companies have workers. How many people have been laid off by the US automakers because people aren't buying their products? The CEOs and marketing people who thought it was a great idea to sponsor the Olympic Games (not necessarily the "China" Olympic Games, but I understand there's still a choice there) are not going to lose their jobs. The workers will as part of cutbacks.
So boycott China and the games. Don't go, don't watch, don't support, encourage others to do the same. Your private boycotts of the sponsors will do just as much as 'not flying to Beijing for the games.' But encouraging others to not watch will send a direct message that we do not want to participate in 'China's games' or support them in any way. A one-time ratings plunge will show our disdain much more than a 0.001% decrease in the number of Snickers sold next year.
-NoGuff
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