New McCarthyism targeting China on dangerous rise in Washington
- Consulting giant McKinsey slammed by US senator for advising Beijing on raising consumption, improving healthcare and developing new tech
Did it or didn’t it work for the Chinese communist government? That was the question the US Congress had for McKinsey, the global consulting firm. McKinsey said no, but there seems to be evidence that it did. Now what did the work involve?
It seems the firm has done consulting for various Chinese agencies and government units on boosting domestic consumption, reforming healthcare policy and developing hi-tech fields.
Even its most fanatical accusers such as Republican Senator Josh Hawley have stopped there. But that’s bad enough. It’s the new McCarthyism, and it’s just as dangerous as those who led Red Scare campaigns in the 1950s.
It seems a now-defunct McKinsey China website had claimed its clients included some Chinese government agencies and non-profit groups with official ties. But what legally sanctioned NGOs aren’t affiliated with some government agencies on the mainland?
The site, mckinseychina.com, which was shut down in 2019, said: “In the past decade alone, we’ve served over 20 different central, provincial and municipal government agencies on a wide range of economic planning, urban redevelopment and social sector issues.”
Well, that’s the smoking gun. Hawley has accused Bob Sternfels, McKinsey’s global managing partner, of lying in a Congressional hearing this month when he said McKinsey had never worked with the Chinese Communist Party or the central government.
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“Those were strong words. Unfortunately for you, they were not true,” Hawley wrote in a letter to Sternfels, calling on the firm to come clean and provide “comprehensive documentation” on all its work, whether past or present, with Beijing.
That was Hawley’s gotcha moment. The distinguished lawmaker then went apoplectic in the letter. “Your company alleges that its purpose is to ‘help create positive, enduring change in the world’. You should know that helping totalitarian foreign powers undermine America does not meet that bar,” he wrote. “This ugly record can – and must – inform whether the American government, or anyone else, can safely trust your company’s services in the future.”
Far be it for me to defend McKinsey, but I think helping the Chinese to boost consumption and improve their general health may be considered as helping to change the world for the better. If I were a public healthcare expert and Kim Jong-un wanted me to help reform and improve North Korea’s healthcare system for its people, I would do it in a sec.
Hawley has reintroduced a bill, called the Time to Choose Act, which aims to address conflicts of interest in federal contracting and prohibits consulting firms such as McKinsey from simultaneously working with the US and Chinese governments. The bill was first rolled out in 2022 but failed to gain momentum at the time.
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Hawley arguably was on stronger grounds with McKinsey having contributed to an official publication on China’s 13th five-year plan, along with its foreword. The plan included strategies under “Made in China 2025” to position China as the global powerhouse in leading hi-tech industries. Hmm, how is that any different from the industrial policy of President Joe Biden under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Chips and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act?
But McKinsey was giving the Chinese ideas on how to compete against the United States. As many US lawmakers have gone full-blown McCarthy, any tech development in China could be construed as a challenge to US interests. That, I gather, is essentially Hawley’s charge. Well, time to throw Sternfels into jail for lying to Congress, and other McKinsey consultants for helping the Chinese communists! What traitors!
Fellow Republican Tom Cotton showed the same kind of antics as Hawley at an earlier Senate hearing when he kept asking TikTok chief executive Chew Shou Zi about his connections to the Chinese Communist Party. This was despite Chew repeatedly pointing out that he was Singaporean. Cotton also inexplicably claimed that the Lion City was infiltrated by the party.
With such unhinged US senators, you really have to worry about the future of China-US relations.
