Cuomo’s Handpicked Consulting Firm Has A Shady Past With China

The Mid-atlantic states have tapped McKinsey and Company to assist in reopening efforts, but its ties to China are troubling. The consortium of Mid-atlantic states led by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, which is creating a plan to reopen their economies, has hired consulting firm McKinsey and Company to help with their efforts. As the New York Post reported last week, officials close to the process say the McKinsey-aided plan is an attempt to thwart Trump’s efforts at quick reopening, one official called it “Trump-proof.” But McKinsey is very close to another part of this story too, the nation that brought us the coronavirus, China. A brutal expose in the New York Times from 2018 showed a deeply troubling relationship between McKinsey and Communist state-owned companies in China. Some of the projects they worked on, including a set of artificial islands in the South China Sea are at direct odds with stated American policy goals.

In 2018, the consulting firm held a corporate retreat in Western China just a few scant miles from the sites of concentration camps where the Communist government imprisons upwards of a million Uyghur Muslims. This humanitarian crisis was no secret at the time. As the McKinsey executives took camel ride selfies, the world knew that an entire ethnic minority was being systematically erased just down the road. McKinsey’s excuse is the same as every company that kow tows to the communist regime in China, that it’s easier to fix China’s humanitarian problems from the inside. That is unadulterated neoliberal hokum, which has been proven wrong over, and over, and over. Making China more wealthy has not made China more free, it has only made it more powerful. Now it is using that power to challenge American interests and to spread deadly lies about a pandemic it created. McKinsey’s close ties to China should give us some pause considering the power that Cuomo’s Mid-atlantic band of governors are prepared to give it. Much of the firm’s work will be modeling testing and testing result patterns, which means they will be gathering and generating a remarkable amount of valuable data. These states are also looking at potential tracing programs meant to isolate infected individuals. These kinds of invasive practices walk a fine line in regard to civil liberties. Maybe a consulting firm that is comfortable looking the other way at literal concentration camps is not the best choice to assist in efforts to contain a virus while respecting the rights of American citizens. We also might consider the wisdom of handing so much information to a company with its hands so deeply and snugly in Communist China’s pockets.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/22/cuomos-handpicked-consulting-firm-has-a-shady-past-with-china/

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How McKinsey Has Helped Raise the Stature of Authoritarian Governments

Dec. 15, 2018

This year’s McKinsey & Company retreat in China was one to remember. Hundreds of the company’s consultants frolicked in the desert, riding camels over sand dunes and mingling in tents linked by red carpets. Meetings took place in a cavernous banquet hall that resembled a sultan’s ornate court, with a sign overhead to capture the mood. “I can’t keep calm, I work at McKinsey & Company,” it said. Especially remarkable was the location: Kashgar, the ancient Silk Road city in China’s far west that is experiencing a major humanitarian crisis. About four miles from where the McKinsey consultants discussed their work, which includes advising some of China’s most important state-owned companies, a sprawling internment camp had sprung up to hold thousands of ethnic Uighurs — part of a vast archipelago of indoctrination camps where the Chinese government has locked up as many as one million people.

One week before the McKinsey event, a United Nations committee had denounced the mass detentions and urged China to stop. But the political backdrop did not appear to bother the McKinsey consultants, who posted pictures on Instagram chronicling their Disney-like adventures. In fact, McKinsey’s involvement with the Chinese government goes much deeper than its odd choice to showcase its presence in the country. For a quarter-century, the company has joined many American corporations in helping stoke China’s transition from an economic laggard to the world’s second-largest economy. But as China’s growth presents a muscular challenge to American dominance, Washington has become increasingly critical of some of Beijing’s signature policies, including the ones McKinsey has helped advance. One of McKinsey’s state-owned clients has even helped build China’s artificial islands in the South China Sea, a major point of military tension with the United States. It turns out that McKinsey’s role in China is just one example of its extensive — and sometimes contentious — work around the world, according to an investigation by The New York Times that included interviews with 40 current and former McKinsey employees, as well as dozens of their clients.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/15/world/asia/mckinsey-china-russia.html