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Wang Lei, global executive vice president for British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca and president of its decades-old branch in China, said on Friday that the company “loves the Communist Party” and will strive to express its patriotic affection for the tyrannical regime in Beijing.
Other AstraZeneca executives refused to comment on these astonishing remarks or confirm if Wang was expressing the company’s true posture toward China.
As Reuters pointed out, there was little chance that Wang simply “misspoke” – as corporate public relations teams often suggest – because everything he said was broadcast on a big screen behind him while he addressed a 30th-anniversary gala for AstraZeneca in China:
“Build a local, transnational company that loves the Communist Party and loves the country,” Wang said in his presentation to an audience of a few hundred participants. Photographs showed the words flashing across a screen behind him.
In response to questions from Reuters on whether Wang’s pledge, and the contents of the presentation, were approved by AstraZeneca’s senior management, a spokesperson at the company’s headquarters in Cambridge declined to comment.
The spokesperson also declined to comment on what Wang’s comments meant for its business plans in China.
Reuters charitably noted that other foreign companies like Apple have spoken up to “stress their commitment” to China after that wondrous land of cheap labor and negligible environmental protections emerged from years of destructive coronavirus lockdowns.
