On Thursday, National Legal and Policy Center presented a “Communist China Risk Audit” proposal at McDonald’s Corporation’s annual shareholder meeting that would require the company to produce a report that addresses its vulnerabilities related to its extensive business in the communist country.
The company’s board of directors opposed our proposal, as explained on pages 93-94 of its proxy statement.
NLPC filed a detailed proxy memorandum at the Securities and Exchange Commission in support of its proposal.
Speaking as sponsor of the resolution was Paul Chesser, director of NLPC’s Corporate Integrity Project. The transcript of his two-minute remarks, which you can also listen to here, follows:
So why did McDonald’s put the term “Communist China” in quotation marks when it labeled our proposal in the proxy statement?
Does McDonald’s not believe China is truly communist?
Or are Company officials just signaling to the Chinese Communist Party that our proposal wasn’t their idea, so McDonald’s won’t lose access to the country or be punished by Chairman Xi?
It’s amazing what dictatorial regimes can make a so-called capitalist corporation do to protect its profits and shield communists.
To make a comparison, I don’t recall McDonald’s putting the term “Black Lives Matter” in quotation marks in any of its materials, when the so-called “movement” was looting and burning down our major cities a couple of years ago.
Now we see that the main grifters of that moment, the BLM Global Network Foundation, has burned through tens of millions of dollars from donations, much of it from corporations.
BLM now borders on insolvency, according to reports earlier this week, after the co-founder bought mansions in wealthy neighborhoods and funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to friends and family members.
Meanwhile a city like McDonald’s home of Chicago is left in tatters, and may very well be the murder capital of the U.S.
Virtue-signaling to buy off the “defund the police” crazies has a cost.
Last year McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski raised concerns about the conditions of stores, employee safety, and being able to recruit staff for the Windy City headquarters.
This is what corporations like McDonald’s reap when they demonize law enforcement with a broad brush, like when it said, “we stand for…victims of systemic oppression and violence.”
Why is McDonald’s so bold to stand up to phony “systemic racism” among law enforcement in the U.S., but refuses to honestly identify the oppressive and genocidal nation of China as “communist?”
Such evasion is why we’d like more disclosures about the Company’s risks in China.
Please vote FOR Proposal 7.
Read NLPC’s shareholder proposal for McDonald’s Corporation’s 2023 annual meeting here.
Listen to the audio of Chesser’s delivered remarks in support of the proposal here.
Read NLPC’s proxy memorandum filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission here.