"...The trick is that they're not promoting an ideology/cultural value domestically; they're bowing to local influence everywhere, including domestically."
I think that this is the main issue. It is my opinion that this problem stems from the business and finance minded dogma of pushing efficiency, regardless of the long-term damage done to a brand/product/service, simply because in the short term it is _cheaper_ to do so. The long term damage is traded for short term gains.... kicking the bucket down the road if you will but doing long term damage to the business or institution overall.
In this particular context, lets take the example of Disney cutting/splicing/editing certain scenes from their films and shows in order to gain release approval in China. Instead of having one film product with a certain edit in the US, then another for China, then another for India, and so on, it is just _cheaper_ to have a single version edit of the film to release "everywhere". So in order to do this Disney has to appease a variety of censors and overview boards and make all changes in order to make a single film product where every governmental review board is happy. The pros is that you have a single version of the film thus making overall production costs cheaper. However the main con is that you may have specific ideological influence added to the product where it should or shouldn't be, or the tone or message of the film product might fundamentally change which breaks the premise/lesson, or the story is watered down essentially making the product meaningless, or the entertainment product might not be entertaining! The only real benefit in this case is that Disney still gets to release the film in as many markets as possible (thus meeting the rule of numbers for possible profit) but the customer starts to feel less connected to the brand so they start to lose interest and eventually abandon it. There are better examples of course. This is just one.
