Stock or securities manipulation is the major issue that the authorities are concerned about and most would rightly agree with that position. However, there are other possible issues. Perhaps the placement of a major order and the need to get a ‘very good deal’, an alternative supplier who is itching to break into the market, so on and so forth. None of those are directly or indirectly in the securities fraud business, though a sales person might get a useful bonus. Perhaps it was aimed at darkening Bloomberg’s halo, or perhaps they were just collateral in the way. What is has done is darken the image of using China for anything much of anything and mud sticks as we all demonstrate in our own lives to greater or lesser extents, no smoke without fire and all that.
As for news organisations being careful ‘managers of news’ more like manipulators of information. This is frankly old news. Go buy me a war was the Randolph Hurst tag line before WWII and we have all seen many such stories bending to the whims or dictates of the owner or sponsor. I have in the past run news centres so I was able to see both the events being reported and the reports being filed. While some stories were pure fiction others were so slanted that a 3 year old child could have been made to appear as a machine gunning mass murderer more easily than you would believe the bilge-water some fiction writers, sorry reporters concocted. Some wrote ‘first hand reports’ without ever going near the events in question.
The one constant in this is that one person has been itching to make a solid case for not using China for technology manufacturing, though I have some concerns that even his twisted mind would have held off from getting his hands into a sticky mess like this. Would some of his bigot friends be so scrupulous? Read up on the Hurst empire and wonder.
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