Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

How is bowing to China woke? Not following.

You don't get it. It is not woke. That is the fun part. To make them dance morally in the chase of profit. To put them in between the blue checkmarks and the china government and to end pissing off both sides.

The other way around. Woke Inc. want to stay woke, but they also want to not be on the bad side of the Chinese state due to business interest there.

Hence, the woke company needs to do pretty un-woke things, and their hypocrisy is exposed.

Oh, okay. It seems to me like being critical of the Chinese government is popular with both sides of the American political spectrum. Maybe even more so with conservatives!

I think the part that confused me was the idea of one side in the culture war forcing companies to bow to China, as a tactical manoeuvre. I just can’t see the “unwoke” segments siding with China.

Yeah, but claiming moral high ground for boycotting Georgia over transgender bathrooms is hard while simultaneously doing business with China with the Uygur and Hong Kong situations.

After reading further reply, I understand the idea as this: the "unwoke" side of the culture war sees a company proclaiming to be woke, and to expose them as hypocrites they do something that forces the company to either defy China or to reveal that their woke marketing is full of crap.

Agreed! But (in the example of the Georgia boycott) who exactly is going to use the tactic you mentioned of forcing a company to bow to China? In concrete terms, how do you see that playing out?

Gotcha, thanks. Calling that “forcing them to bow” is strange to me, but I think your reading is right :)

Not OP. But actors and companies calling for boycott of Georgia for unjust abortion laws are not voicing similar boycotts of China over HK, uyghurs, etc. I try to avoid whataboutism, but it’s hard not to notice how boycotting Georgia has a pretty negligible impact to bottom lines, but boycotting China (or even saying things like “freedom for HK”) results in being cut out of China for films.

I think the reason we don’t see lots of actors talking about HK is that it could mean that if they are in a future film it will be harder to market in China. Producers know this. Actors know producers know this.