I'm not at Google but my guess is that the number of Chinese employees and the current protests in HongKong might create some internal political fights.
I haven't been at Google in 5 years but I worked with a lot of Chinese coworkers from all three of mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong when I was there (as well as ABCs of those descents). Honestly, I never saw a Chinese employee get into a political argument. Mostly they were just happy to be in the U.S. and draw a Google-level salary. ABCs (including myself) would, but usually about American politics, not Chinese.
I think most Americans underestimate the extent to which most Chinese are apolitical and pragmatic. Chinese culture doesn't have the tradition of civic engagement and vigorous debate that Anglo-American culture does, and skews more towards Exit than Voice. A typical Chinese response to a looming civil war is more akin to "Well shit. Better emigrate (if I can) or pay off the right soldiers and officials (if I can't) so this doesn't harm my family" than to demonstrate in the streets and call for the ouster of the leaders in question. This is a double-edged sword: it's how the CCP maintains social controls that would be unacceptable violations of civil liberties in Western democracies, it's also behind the "model minority" image of Asian-Americans, but it also means that you don't get a lot of disruptive political talk in groups with Asian immigrants.
The action in question involved 3 mainland students and one Hong Kong student.
How many people live in mainland China? 1.3B. How many people live in Hong Kong? 7.4M. How many overseas Chinese are there? 50M. How many overseas Hongkongers? About 1.5M.
You can bet that if there is any one such incident happening in the globe, the press will seize on it, because it fits the current media narrative and gets clicks. By the numbers, though, you're looking at 1 in a million.
I heard from some friends in NYC that there was drama over the lego flag sculptures, where the Taiwanese lego flag was mysteriously smashed several times and the rebuilt flag hidden behind a larger PRC lego flag.
> Chinese nationals inside Google have at times clashed with its techno-libertarian culture. One infamous example, detailed in a book by the former head of Google’s “people operations,” comes from 2008, when the company cafeteria offered employees a “Free Tibet Goji-Chocolate Creme Pie.” This offended a Chinese national at the company, who sent an email to Chief Executive Larry Page. The chef was immediately suspended — then, after a companywide email thread that at the time was the longest in Google history, reinstated. An engineer who was at Google at the time told me the whole controversy was “ridiculous.”
Exactly, the relationship with China is way more fractious and important. Very unlikely triggered by domestic US opinions as almost nothing will affect their relationship with the US (specifically because there is no consolidation of single-party power), so people debating “stretch goals” in advancing US inclusion and US civil rights doesn't really change anything. If you know “how to America” then you know how to take advantage of anyone in charge and it doesn't matter how divided the country is.
But Hyper-patriotic Chinese employees dealing with US ideology towards China certainly would change things.
Its not so different than vocally disagreeing with Israel’s “foreign” policy and expecting to still remain employed anywhere. Not gonna happen!
You have to recognize who the masters are or who they are beholden to.
Being from China, which bans Google, while working at Google and arguing in favor of China's policies toward Hong Kong must make for some severe cognitive dissonance.
As far as I know Google isn't banned in China; it's just blocked. In the sense that there are no legal consequences for using a VPN to get around the firewall.
