Cadillac is a beloved American brand. So why is it starring in a propaganda film about the birth of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)? The U.S. government-backed General Motors (GM) has offered the car up for use in a new film celebrating the CCP’s 90th birthday, “The Birth of a Party.”
GM’s sponsorship of this celebration is appalling, considering the bloody history of the Chinese Communist Party and the role it has played in China’s dismal human rights record. The film covers events leading up to the CCP’s creation in the early 1900s. Cadillac announced itself as a “chief business partner” of the communist propaganda film the same year China refused to release democracy and human rights advocate Liu Xiaobo from prison to receive the Nobel Prize. Xiaobo was represented at the ceremony by an empty chair.
The deal was made in hopes of helping GM recover from bankruptcy by expanding Cadillac’s popularity in China, its largest worldwide market. If GM were a completely private company, this would be a matter for its board and shareholders to take up with management. But as The Washington Times points out, the U.S. government owns 33 percent of GM. This means the American taxpayer is forced to support this gross publicity stunt. It also means the good name of the United States of America is on the line, not just that of a private company with a bottom line to meet.
There are certainly nobler causes to sponsor. For example, Heritage’s Dr. Lee Edwards chairs the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. The Memorial commemorates the more than 100 million victims of communism and is represented by a replica of a statue erected by Chinese students in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China in the spring of 1989. An estimated 65 million died as a result of communist brutality just under Mao Zedong. Surely this slaughter will not be part of the film GM is sponsoring. In a paper last year, Edwards writes:
China presents itself as a vast market for U.S. companies and investors. But some U.S. companies are taking a second look at doing business in a country which considers Mao Zedong its patron saint. Google has said it is reconsidering its operations in China after discovering a sophisticated cyber attack on its e-mail which the government must have initiated or approved.
…I wonder: would President Obama be so ready to kowtow to China if in the middle of Beijing there was a mausoleum of Hitler and, hanging from the gate to the Forbidden City, a giant swastika?
America does not have a great record of combating China’s human rights abuses. Certainly, a taxpayer-backed American company lending one of its brands to a film celebrating the very party that perpetuates these abuses isn’t helping.
Founded in 1973, The Heritage Foundation is a research and educational institution—a think tank—whose mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.
