The question posed by the CEO in question, while valid, is futile --verging on naive.
To really mean it, you'll refuse: money, investment and goods from China, Russia, Gulf, many African countries, Latin America, etc. to such an extent so as to bring the world economy to a virtual standstill. In addition to refusing money also No Oil from Saudi, Venezuela, Russia, or Goods from China, Minerals from Africa...
It's well meaning perhaps, but utterly disingenuous. It's mostly CYA.
When you're making a decision to take investment, the assumption is that they may get 10-100x that amount of money back if the company succeeds. So taking investment from a bad regime might give them another billion to work with 10 years from now. That's a different scale from consumer purchasing decisions, where your decisions might move a thousand dollars from the worst regimes if you're careful about investigating the supply chain of everything you buy.
So rather than disingenuous, it seems extremely pragmatic to worry about the $billions more than the $thousands. You should worry about it literally a million times as much.
There's a difference between accepting money and goods from Chinese or Russian investors and accepting money from specific bad actors. For example, taking investor money (and thus giving voting rights) from groups like SoftBank (which has a ton of Saudi Royal family money), is a totally different ballgame from say, buying MacBooks that are made in China.
It's more than just MacBooks manufactured by internal migrants in China[1]. You also have many Chinese tech giants with SV offices: what, refuse to rent them RE, or refuse them building permits? How far does this go?
Not that far. Again, to reiterate my argument, paying money to Chinese companies is not the same thing as giving them a board seat. For me, the line would be drawn at that. If I rent my offices from then, they don't get any control over my company. If I take a billion dollars from them, then I am beholden to them in a large way. Fubdibg another office space or a different pc maker is not a problem.
SA (and Russia, to an extent) is a different best than the rest, though, is it not? When people say SA, they mean money owned or controlled by the royal family, who are directly analogous to an organized crime syndicate.
Whereas, there are plenty of Chinese people who are not directly responsible for human rights violations. Does Jack Ma have more blood on his hands than Bill Gates?
Failure to recognize shades of gray serves no good, either.
I'd say it depends how much you can separate the cash from the malicious governments. There are plenty of chinese investors only connected to the Party by one or two links. Not so in Russia or SA.
To really mean it, you'll refuse: money, investment and goods from China, Russia, Gulf, many African countries, Latin America, etc. to such an extent so as to bring the world economy to a virtual standstill. In addition to refusing money also No Oil from Saudi, Venezuela, Russia, or Goods from China, Minerals from Africa...
It's well meaning perhaps, but utterly disingenuous. It's mostly CYA.