There was a time when Sony was America’s go-to electronics company. Its stereos, TVs, car stereos, and tape decks were state of the art. Its name was emblazoned on the scoreboard at Dodger Stadium, a cathedral of America’s pastime — the story went that Sony bought the scoreboard for the Dodgers and charged them just $1 for the privilege of putting its name on the bottom.
But in recent years, seemingly lured by a Chinese market with triple the population and dramatically increased buying power, Sony has fallen in with the wrong crowd.
Today, the partner Sony seems to seek to impress most is not the Dodgers or American baseball fans but Tencent, a Chinese corporation controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.
While China doesn’t own Tencent outright, it holds what are known as “golden shares”
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