31 Mar 2021, 17:00 CET

ZOOM

PSSI’s Chairman and Co-Founder, Roger W. Robinson Jr., delivered on March 31st, 2021, an inaugural lecture in a series focused on strengthening Czech-US collaboration on promoting free market values. The lecture, entitled “Chinese Corporate “Bad Actors” in the US and European Capital Markets”, was organized with the support of the US Embassy in Prague.

Corporate 'bad actors' are publicly traded commercial companies that are funding, or seeking to fund, the malevolent activities of their respective governments (which often control them), in part, by accessing U.S. and other Western capital markets. Not surprisingly, such companies are most often either Chinese or Russian. The list of malevolent activities underwritten, in whole or in part, by these companies' listing and/or traded on Western exchanges includes: aiding and abetting genocide against the Uyghurs and other religious minorities; funding advanced weapon systems destined for the People’s Liberation Army; the building and militarization of China’s illegal islands in the South China Sea; the construction of a repressive “surveillance state”; facilitating cyber espionage and attacks; and contributing to sizable environmental despoilage. 

The issue of U.S.-sanctioned and other Chinese corporate “bad actors” residing in the U.S. capital market is being actively debated in the U.S. and is presently a subject of deliberation at the Presidential level. Safeguarding European investors from, for example, non-transparent and even fraudulent Chinese companies is  an increasingly  concern, but the malign security and human rights abuses of these companies is far less visible and policy relevant in Europe. 

You can watch the recording of the lecture below: