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April 30, 2014
Office
of the Secretary
International
Business Machines Corporation
1 New
Orchard Road, Mail Drop 301
Armonk,NY 10504
Re: Shareholder Proposal on Public Policy Committee
Dear Secretary:
Enclosed please find my shareholder proposal for
inclusion in our proxy materials for the 2015 annual meeting of shareholders
and the letter of my shares confirmation. I will continuously hold these shares until
the 2015 annual meeting of shareholders.
Should you have any questions, please contact me at
1-925-643-xxxx (phone/fax) or zhao.cpri@gmail.com. I would suggest that IBM have an email
account to receive shareholder’s proposal and other communications.
Yours
truly,
Jing
Zhao
Shareholder Proposal on Establishing a Public Policy Committee
Resolved:
shareholders recommend that International Business
Machines Corporation (IBM) establish a Public Policy Committee to assist the Board of Directors
in overseeing IBM's policies and practice that relate to public issues
including human rights, corporate social responsibility, supplier chain management,
charitable giving, political activities and expenditures, government
regulations, and especially international relations that may affect IBM's
operations, performance, reputation, and shareholders’ value.
Supporting Statement
IBM
currently has four board committees: Audit Committee, Directors and Corporate
Governance Committee, Executive Compensation and Management Resources
Committee, and Executive Committee, but without a committee to legitimately and
ethically deal with public issues,
especially international affairs, affecting our business. According to our 2013 annual report, IBM has
32% ($31,628m/$97,800m) revenue in Europe/Middle East/Africa, 23% ($22,923/$97,800m)
revenue in Pacific Asia; “Within the BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India and
China, ... The company continues to see
good opportunity in all regions over the long term and is continuing to invest
in these key markets.” (p.40); “During 2013, performance inChinawas
impacted by the process surrounding the implementation of a broad governmental
economic reform plan.”(p.41). IBM is
truly a leading international business corporation in the world.
The
globalization has made the world increasingly connected and complicated. For example, the U.S.-Japan Joint Statement on
April 25, 2014 includes such dangerous contents as: "These commitments
extend to all the territories under the administration ofJapan, including theSenkakuIslands."
"TheUnited Stateswelcomes and supportsJapan’s
consideration of the matter of exercising the right of collective
self-defense." The Japanese
government has misled the U.S. under the U.S.-Japan Security Treaties to crash
with the rising power of a nationalistic China since Japan utilized China’s
1989 Tiananmen Tragedy to abandon Japan’s peace constitution (the cornerstone
of Asia’s peace after WWII) towards rearmament, militarization and fascism. Although the Japanese government signed the
G-7 Summit declaration in 1989 to protect Chinese students, I, as a graduate
student inOsakaUniversityorganizing Chinese democratic and human rights activities inJapan, was
persecuted because I refused to collaborate with the Japanese government to
betray my fellow Chinese students. Please
refer to Japan’s second largest newspaper Asahi’s interviews with me on February
10, 1990, October 20, 1992 and June 8, 2009, and my article “The Betrayal of
Democracy: Tiananmen's Shadow over Japan,” Historia Actual Online, 2004, Issue
4 Volume 2.
Partly
to respond to my proposals, Microsoft established such a public policy committee
in 2012. It is also necessary for IBM to
establish a Public Policy Committee.
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