The diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) agenda pushed by the world’s largest asset management firm BlackRock is an example of “the Chinese social credit system applied at the corporate level to America,” Breitbart Economics Editor John Carney said in a Monday interview on Fox Business Network’s “The Bottom Line.”

Carney was asked to comment on remarks that BlackRock CEO Larry Fink made in 2017 about his firm’s efforts to “force change.” The video of Fink’s remarks, which were given at a New York Times DealBook conference, went viral on Monday when Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance (R) tweeted it and denounced BlackRock’s behavior as “illegal and immoral.”

In the 2017 video, Fink states, “Well, behaviors are going to have to change, and this is one thing we’re asking companies. You have to force behaviors. And at BlackRock, we are forcing behaviors.”

“What we’re doing internally is if you don’t achieve these levels of impact, your compensation could be impacted,” Fink continued. “And so, it’s just you have to force behaviors. And if you don’t force behaviors—whether it’s gender or race, or just any way you want to say the composition of your team—you’re going to be impacted.”

“We’re going to have to force change,” Fink concluded in the video.

Carney reported that BlackRock is trying to backpedal from Fink’s 2017 comments after being called out by Vance.

“Black Rock is actually trying to backpedal this,” Carney said. “They’re saying this is very old. This is how we were thinking of things in 2017. We don’t really want to do it. But they do”

“This is the Chinese social credit system applied at the corporate level to America,” Carney explained. “Corporate CEOs feel under pressure to adopt the right environmental, the right social, the right diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, all because one of the biggest investors in the whole world has sent the message to them that this is what they care about.”

Brian Brenberg, guest-hosting for “Bottom Line” host Sean Duffy, noted that DEI and ESG (environmental, social, and governance) initiatives are a way for woke activists to enact their unpopular agenda by bypassing the democratic process.

“This stuff would never pass if legislators had to vote on it,” Brenberg said. “So, corporations carry the water or the government bureaucracy does it behind the scenes through regulation. But either way, it happens to people without them ever getting a chance to raise their hand and say, hey, we don’t want this.”

“And the people whose money BlackRock is investing also haven’t said that’s what they want,” Carney noted. “And that’s one of the reasons BlackRock has tried more recently to walk this back — because they realized that they had gotten way out to the left of the American people, and they need the American people. That’s why they’re the biggest asset manager — because they’re running people’s retirement funds. If people say, ‘Wait a minute, I don’t want you pushing this far-left agenda on America, give me my money back’ that will put the company in trouble. So, they’re trying to run away from this.”

Fox Business host Dagen McDowell commented on the apparent hypocrisy of a white man like Larry Fink, who runs the most powerful asset management firm in the world, talking about “forcing” diversity.

“Why haven’t you stepped aside, Lar, if you’re going to force this — what is it environmental, social, and corporate governance — if you’re going to force it on people?” she quipped.

Carney noted that BlackRock is quite serious about keeping a scorecard of every other company’s DEI and ESG compliance and presumably applying consequences for companies that BlackRock deems insufficiently woke.

“They’re also really into what he said [about] scorecards,” Carney said. “So, what they’re doing is they’re actually keeping very careful track. How well have you done in pushing an environmental agenda? How well have you done in pushing the DEI agenda? And if you don’t have a high enough score, you could suffer in terms of what their investments could be.”

Brenberg then asked Carney to comment on corporate celebrations of Pride Month, noting that a number of large companies have added pride flags to their U.S. Twitter accounts but not to their accounts in the Middle East, despite the human rights abuses suffered by LGBTQ people in the region.

“Is this a principle issue? Or is this just a money thing?” Brenberg asked.

“I’ll tell you what the principle is. The principle is to kiss the butt of the regime in charge,” Carney replied. “So, right now in America, BlackRock and others and all of these woke corporations look at the regime in charge as the far left. When they are going to Saudi Arabia, they say we’re going to obey the sheiks. In America, they obey the wokes.”

“That’s the system here. It’s not even hypocrisy. It’s one rule. It’s obey the powerful, and that’s what these people are doing,” he concluded.

Rebecca Mansour is Senior Editor-at-Large for Breitbart News. Follow her on Twitter at @RAMansour.