HONG KONG — A best public members of the family executive from Chinese generation firm Baidu apologized Thursday after she made comments in a chain of movies that critics stated glorified a tradition of overwork.
Baidu’s head of communications, Qu Jing, drew a public outcry in China after she implied within the movies that she used to be now not excited by her staff as she used to be “not their mom” and stated she best cared about effects. She additionally stated that the connection between her and her subordinates used to be purely an “employer-employee relationship.”
The backlash used to be swift, with many on social media platforms such as Weibo criticizing Qu as missing empathy.
Qu posted an apology Thursday on her non-public WeChat account, the place she “sincerely apologized to all netizens” and clarified that she had now not sought Baidu’s permission earlier than posting the movies.
Qu stated that her brief movies didn’t constitute Baidu’s stance. Baidu operates China’s dominant seek engine as neatly as the Ernie bot, a synthetic intelligence provider very similar to ChatGPT.
“Many of the criticisms are very pertinent, I am reflecting deeply and humbly accept them,” she stated. “There are many inappropriate (things said) in the video that caused external misunderstandings about the company’s values and corporate culture, causing serious harm. I sincerely apologize.”
Qu additionally pledged to make stronger her verbal exchange and control taste and care extra for her colleagues.
Baidu didn’t right away remark.
The movies, that have since been taken down, got here at a time when many younger folks in China are pushing again towards a tradition of festival and grueling hours within the place of work.
Qu won grievance for a spread of topics she discussed within the collection of brief movies on Douyin, the Chinese an identical of TikTok.
In the collection, she introduced up an incident of positive staff who despatched loads of grievance letters towards her to the place of job, and threatened to wreck their careers through making sure that they may by no means once more discover a activity within the trade.
In one of the crucial movies, she criticized an worker who refused to head on a 50-day trade commute all through the Covid-19 pandemic. China had applied strict shuttle restrictions that at occasions incorporated weeks of quarantine for shuttle even inside the nation.
“Why should I take into consideration my employee’s family? I’m not her mother-in law,” Qu stated, including that if staff refused to head on such work journeys then they wouldn’t get wage raises or activity promotions.
Chinese generation corporations have lengthy been criticized for their lengthy running hours.
A public debate used to be spark off in recent times over the “996” paintings tradition, the place staff in generation corporations have been anticipated to paintings from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days every week. The factor used to be additionally spotlighted after the deaths of 2 staff of Chinese e-commerce firm Pinduoduo, considered one of whom collapsed abruptly in the street on her approach house from paintings.
Jack Ma, founding father of Alibaba, additionally confronted grievance in 2019 for endorsing the 12-hour workday tradition, announcing that those that loved their paintings would now not in finding the “996” apply to be an issue.
