Sony Offends China, Must Pay Hurt Feelings Fee

Sony will pay China $150,000 for having first scheduled and then canceled a camera announcement on July 7 this past summer, a commemoration day of the Sino-Japanese War.

Above, China’s View of the Sony ZV-E10 Launch

For having hurt the country’s feelings by continuing to do business as usual 125 years after the conflict, Sony must pay a 17.7 million yen fee for “damaging the dignity of the Chinese state.”

While the conflict exerted a terrible effect on China in the 1800s, there is some Chinese history that has passed between then and now, including at least half a dozen conflicts that killed more people and/or enslaved more people; but these might be less attributable to a specific external actor. For these additional slights to the country’s dignity, perhaps someone can set up a GoFundMe campaign.

China has been aggressive in the past two years in pursuing what sometimes seems trivial matters, often as part of a campaign to exert pressure on foreign corporations to conform to certain foreign policy principals, such as not recognizing Taiwan as anything but a break-away province. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Sino-Japanese war caused Taiwan to be ceded from China in 1895. It had been part of China for just 200 years prior to that, but is today the object of a rather large military build-up on the part of China.