<a href="https://www.newsweek.com/cathay-ceo-refused-name-hong-kong-protesters-chinese-government-named-himself-instead-resigned-1455371" rel="nofollow">https://www.newsweek.com/cathay-ceo-refused-name-hong-kong-p...</a><p>> The Taiwan News claimed that Cathay Pacific CEO Rupert Hogg's decision to resign last week came after he refused to name names to the Chinese government when he was asked to provide a list of employees who were involved in the Hong Kong protests.<p>> China's Civil Aviation Administration ordered Cathay to provide a list of employees who were involved in a recent protest. He was also ordered to suspend the employees. According to the Taiwan News, Hogg provided the list—but it included only one name: his own.<p>> His resignation was first announced by CCTV, China's state-run television station, 30 minutes before Cathay Pacific announced Hogg had stepped down.
>Chinese inspectors have started screening the phones of Cathay crew for anti-Beijing material.<p>If that doesn't persuade ordinary Hong Kongers to love and trust the mainland authorities, I don't know what will.
China is applying a lot of pressure on Hong Kongers right now, including searching devices at the border for any signs of protest photos. The Hong Kong police have requested Octopus card records (the mass transit card that is linked to individual user IDs) and CCTV footage of the airport protests last week. There is evidence of information sharing between Hong Kong police and mainland authorities.<p>The implied threat is that anyone who participates in protests risks their livelihood and prospects of future education, and that major companies in Hong Kong will not be allowed to remain apolitical, but must choose sides.<p>These pressure tactics are intended to break the Hong Kong protests, and while taken very seriously by Hong Kongers, have so far failed to achieve that aim.
Samsung magically fell to zero market share in China in the span of 2 to 3 years, that's a warning to any company doing business in China, now they are targeting Fedex over the alleged intentional diversion to the US of some Huawei packages, when China is angry at Korea, Lotte and Samsung became sacrificial lambs to the pent-up ire, Fedex and maybe some other American campanies may be the new ones (Amazon narrowly escaped the witchhunt of anti-China items since they exited China themself just months ago).
Why don't we form a new WTO, without China or other dictatorships, and only allow in democracies that are liberal or liberalizing? There's no point in opening our arms to China if they aren't moving on the right track anymore towards becoming a free and fair society.
And today, Cathay Dragon sacked the head of the flight attendant's union.<p><a href="https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/video-gallery.htm?vid=1476318" rel="nofollow">https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/video-gallery.htm?vid=1476318</a>
It's sad to see a company suffer the cost of nationalism. This is what happens when nationalism trumps human to human connections.<p>Protest in Hong Kong has descended into nationalism and sovereignty issue for 1.4 billion people. Majority wins even though there is some protection guaranteed in most nation and there are plenty of examples in recent days where majority wins. In social media it's majority wins, minority is always relegated to corner.<p>I hope it resolves amicably.
I don't know if this is a coincidence but Cathay Pacific is symbolic of colonial times.<p>The founders were not Chinese, the main shareholder has always been British, the CEO until a week ago was British. It's always been a western (anglosphere) company operating in China/Asia, not a Chinese company and perhaps the Chinese authorities want to make clear that it is now a Chinese company.
It seems like the most dangerous threat to Cathay is the following line from the article:<p>> China’s airline regulator declared it unsafe<p>Based on other sources it means that Cathay would be forbidden to enter China's airspace. It entails much more than not being able to land in China: since the airspace of Hong Kong is surrounded by that of China, it is virtually impossible <i>not</i> to enter China's airspace when using the only international airport in Hong Kong. Being forbidden to enter China's airspace means not being able to fly to and from Hong Kong, a death spell for Cathay.
The assault is real enough not just executives are gone and some employees are resigned (or fired?) due to their support of hk protestor. Not sure anyone has been fired if they post support of the police. But a related firm dragon air has top Union lady fired after confirming her holding a Facebook account.<p>The power of china given its economic power and land mass and no of people should wake up people. Unless there is a way to constrain it, if should be contained one way or the other.
This should be a notification for all companies, it is time to think about more than profits. This sort of behavior must not be enabled by continued business with the Chinese state.
Does this scare YC China?<p><a href="https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-china-qi-lu/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-china-qi-lu/</a>
This is getting ridiculous. There’s too many paywalled articles posted on HN and the web link is no longer a reliable work around. Bad user experience is just going to drive people away. Please think about reworking your algorithm otherwise comments are just going to be based in the title since few people can actually read it. Yes, I realize this is going to get downvoted because of posting policy but I’m willing to take the karma damage to try to improve the community before it’s too late.
They should make a backup of the phone and then reset it to factory defaults then restore the backup once out of the country.<p>Does the chinese gov have backdoor access to gmail/gdrive?
I have said it before but all of this is pretty classic fascist behavior where loyalty to the corporate state is demanded without question. This is for all serving purposes a monster that the West created. I just worry about what this looks like going forward, where we have this huge massive superpower which acts this way and can't be questioned.
> When the Chinese aviation authority, absurdly, accused the airline of imperilling safety because its employees had joined the protests, Cathay dumped its chief executive.<p>Question: Is there even remotely a legitimate security concern here? Let's say in a hypothetical scenario, the unrest spirals out of control into a state of complete desperation. The HK government and the CCP refuse to compromise on any of the five demands, and the protestors refuse to stand down.<p>Let's say politically polarized HK pilots and cabin crew are flying a plane full of mainlanders.<p>Would you be 100% comfortable being a passenger on that plane as a mainlander?