Supporting Statement: IBM’s 2021 ESG report touts its alleged environmental and ethical impacts.1 It advertises the company’s goals of reducing pollution and reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, as well as policies and practices that it says prioritize qualities such as ethics and accountability.2 The ESG report also highlights the company’s commitment to human rights and its Human Rights Statement of Principles.3
But nothing about doing business in China, which is controlled by the dictatorial and inhumane Chinese Communist Party (CCP), does anything to further these ideals.
For starters, China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, emitting more greenhouse gases than the entire U.S. and the developed world combined.4 Exceeding more than 27 percent of the world’s total global emissions, China’s emissions have more than tripled over the last three decades.5
Furthermore, the Chinese government has an abhorrent human rights record. Its abuses against the Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang has sparked outrage, as evidence of forced labor programs, forced sterilizations, and torture at the hands of the CCP are undeniable.6 Chinese authorities also amplify the magnitude of trafficking crimes in the country by perpetrating genocide and using emerging technologies to carry out discriminatory surveillance and ethno-racial profiling measures designed to subjugate and exploit minority populations.7
This poor human rights record makes China’s increasingly aggressive stance toward Taiwan even more alaiming, as it makes claims of sovereignty over the island. It has recently sent warplanes towards the territory’s air defense zone, and has called for Taiwan’s “reunification” with China, stoking fears and geopolitical instability.8
IBM nonetheless conducts a significant amount of business in China. In fact, according to reports, IBM facilitates the Chinese regime’s mass surveillance against its own citizens.9 Indeed, IBM conducts business in China despite it leading the world in greenhouse gas emissions and committing genocide against ethnic minorities — actions that run directly counter to everything that IBM’s ESG report says the company stands for. As such, it is critical that the Board commission and publish a third-party review that includes experts who are fully aware of the dangers that China poses to the U.S. and its allies around the world, including its military-civil fusion strategy10 and environmental and human rights abuses, to ensure that IBM’s actions as a company live up to its words.