In a move that should provoke outrage on freeper websites everywhere (as well as the organized labor movement in the U.S.) WalMart is allowing the Party of Mao to set up shop in WalMart’s corporate headquarters in Shenzhen, China. Even more than that, a Chinese labor union is organizing all of WalMart’s employees in China - with WalMart’s approval:

BEIJING: Employees at Wal-Mart’s China headquarters have set up a Communist Party branch, the company and party said Monday, amid a campaign to expand the ruling party’s presence in foreign companies.

The move follows the success of China’s state-sanctioned labor body this year in setting up unions at the U.S. retailer’s outlets. Wal-Mart is one of China’s biggest and most prominent foreign employers, with a workforce of 36,000 and 68 stores.

The party branch was set up Friday at Wal-Mart headquarters in the southern city of Shenzhen, according to the party newspaper People’s Daily and a Wal-Mart Stores Inc. spokesman, Jonathan Dong…

It’s more than a mere curiosity that when a government actively promotes and mandates worker protections, multinational companies that want to do business in the country somehow manage to reach an accommodation with the government. Well, maybe not a curiosity - it’s always been my experience that when a government actually requires a company to do something positive for the community, whatever that “something” might be, it generally gets done. If no requirements are made on the company, the concept of corporate benevolence tends to fall by the wayside.

WalMart Watch (a non-profit organization headed by SEIU President Andy Stern) has more here.