Amid alleged human rights abuses from China, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida took action to lessen the state’s dependence on the communist country.
According to the Washington Examiner, DeSantis met Tuesday with Florida’s Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis and Attorney General Ashley Moody. Those three individuals are the current trustees of the State Board of Administration of Florida.
Together, they voted to change the manner in which proceeds from over 30 state funds and the retirement system investment plan are spent.
The Examiner reported the decision represented the board’s goal to “combat woke corporate ideology and malign foreign influence.”
“If you look at how these major companies behave when faced with Chinese disapproval, they censor what the CCP tells them to censor, and we see groveling apologies,” DeSantis said.
“Go back a generation, and the idea of the American elites was, ‘If we allow China into the WTO and give them most favored nation status, that will make China more like us.’ This experiment has failed, and it has endangered our nation’s national and economic security.”
DeSantis said that large American corporations have chosen to ignore the alleged genocide of Uyghurs by the Chinese Communist Party because they are on the country’s payroll.
On Dec. 10, an unofficial London-based tribunal ruled China had committed genocide against Uyghurs and other minorites in the Xinjiang region, CNN reported.
“The tribunal is satisfied that the PRC [People’s Republic of China] has affected a deliberate, systematic and concerted policy with the object of so-called ‘optimizing’ the population in Xinjiang by the means of a long-term reduction of Uyghur and other ethnic minority populations to be achieved through limiting and reducing Uyghur births,” tribunal chair Geoffrey Nice said.
Due to the alleged abuses, American corporations have been criticized for continuing to support China.
According to Fox Business, conservatives previously criticized American companies who were sponsoring the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, China. That list included Coca-Cola and Proctor and Gamble.
In a separate opinion article for Fox Business, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley said “about half” of the sponsors were U.S. companies.
“Many of them, like Coca-Cola, have spent the past year talking about ‘racial equity’ and criticizing commonsense voting rights bills like the one in Georgia,” she said.
“Yet these companies have no problem ponying up $100 million or more for an event that will glorify one of the most tyrannical countries on earth.”
With the SBA trustees’ decision in Florida, DeSantis said they were issuing a statement against corporations like these who support China.
In particular, he said he intended to send a message “to those in corporate America who prop up a genocidal, authoritarian, imperialist regime that they will not do so with Floridians’ money,” according to the Examiner.
In addition, DeSantis said he would ask the state Legislature to make statutory changes that would prevent Florida tax dollars from going to China.
He also planned to ask the Legislature to help bring manufacturing jobs directly to the state instead of importing goods from China.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.