Corporate stewardship is easy to execute when the stakes are low.

It's easy when there isn't a loser, when the platitudes handed down from the C-suite are feel-good and vague, when foreign officials who control one of the most commercially significant markets on the planet aren't demanding some sort of action or apology, despite their regime's documented history of human rights abuses and trepidation for free speech.

CEOs are accountable to their shareholders, their employees and their companies' bottom lines. So when companies find themselves running afoul of the Chinese government – as a cavalcade of organizations has done in recent years, with the National Basketball Association, Apple and Activision Blizzard the latest examples – bending the knee is often a sound business decision if the ultimate goal is gaining access to the El Dorado that is the Chinese consumer base.

"It is not the job of a CEO or a company to save the world or to run political and social norms. But it is their job to respond to the changing environment for business in which both customers and employees can decide, 'OK, you don't believe in that? Goodbye. I'm not doing business with you,'" says Paul Argenti, a corporate communications expert and professor at Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business.

American multinationals in recent years have increasingly said they aspire to be more than just generators of product and capital. As recently as August, the Business Roundtable nonprofit – whose members include the heads of Apple, JPMorgan Chase and Marriott – announced plans to redefine " the purpose of a corporation ." The statement hailed a "free-market system" as "the best means of generating good jobs, a strong and sustainable economy, innovation, a healthy environment and economic opportunity for all."

It's a shrewd business decision, given nearly two-thirds of global consumers say they will buy or boycott a brand because of its stance on social or political issues, according to the 2018 survey conducted by Edelman . But those open-market ideals and proclamations of global stewardship have juxtaposed a recent but apparent corporate willingness to make China happy on the relatively closed-off economy's own terms, even if that means silencing dissenting opinions or turning a blind eye to human rights violations, religious oppression or environmental concerns.

"Companies basically pay lip service to this stuff. But when push comes to shove, it's business," Argenti says. "All of China is going to be against you if you start questioning their approach to how they treat people and what they do."

The situations in which some of these organizations have found themselves are unenviable. In the NBA's case, the Houston Rockets' general manager tweeted a pro-Hong Kong message from his personal Twitter account earlier in the week as a group of NBA teams traveled to China for a preseason publicity tour. A week-long damage control effort ensued as China threatened to derail the entire tour. Among events that were canceled by the Chinese government in the aftermath of the tweet was a stop in Shanghai that would have benefited the Special Olympics.

The Photos You Should See – Oct. 2019 View All 84 Images

"The problem that we see for the NBA ... that is the nightmare for every U.S. firm operating in China right now," Richard Martin, managing director at IMA Asia, said in an interview with CNBC's " Street Signs " on Wednesday.

The tweet's blowback prompted apologies from not only the Houston Rockets' general manager, but also the team's owner, star player James Harden and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. China threatened to pull coverage of NBA games, restrict merchandise sales and scrap corporate partnerships with NBA entities, because one executive from one team tweeted support for ongoing pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

"He shouldn't have sent the tweet in the first place. It has nothing to do with free speech. He obviously can do whatever he wants. You can do whatever you want, but are you willing to pay the consequences for what you do?" Argenti says. "And, to their credit, the NBA rallied around him and didn't say, 'Oh, this is some crazy guy that we're going to throw over the ship.'"

Indeed, Houston's general manager still has his job. And, after initially flailing between knee-jerk apologies to China and defense of an American citizen's right to free speech, the NBA steadied its message. Silver issued a statement this week clarifying that "the NBA will not put itself in a position of regulating what players, employees and team owners say or will not say on these issues."

"I respect him a lot for standing by his employee and saying we do believe in free speech," Argenti says. "I believe that this was actually pretty well done by comparison."

There were hiccups along the way – the Houston Rockets cut off a CNN reporter on Thursday attempting to ask Harden and fellow all-star Russell Westbrook about the offending tweet and subsequent controversy. But Elizabeth Economy, a senior fellow and director for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted in a blog post this week that "knowingly or not, Silver became one of the first heads of a major U.S. corporation to take on China in the latter's efforts to use its market power to coerce international actors to comply with its political positions."

"By championing the right to, and value of, such diversity in viewpoints, Silver has elevated the NBA and delivered a much-needed reminder to all Americans about how to manage controversy in political discourse," Economy wrote.

The NBA was arguably the highest profile organization to run afoul of China this week, though it was not alone. Apple, for example, caught flack for pulling an application called HKmap.live from its App Store. The app allowed users to share information about protests, police activity and street closures in Hong Kong, but it was ultimately delisted shortly after an article in China's state-owned People's Daily accused Apple of "mixing business with politics," encouraging the company to "think about the consequences of its unwise and reckless decision" to host the app in the first place.

"We're seeing what happens when CEOs have to decide between protecting their company's future in a big market and being a good world citizen," says Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. "I read the stuff that (Apple) sent out. But they'll fight the U.S. authorities about encryption, about giving U.S. authorities access to data. With China, boom, they jump."

And Activision Blizzard this week suspended professional esports player Chung Ng Wai after he professed support for Hong Kong during an interview at a Hearthstone Grandmasters tournament – the premier competition of Activision Blizzard's Hearthstone digital card game.

Chung, who is based in Hong Kong and goes by the professional handle "Blitzchung," donned goggles and a facemask and recited a "liberate Hong Kong" slogan in a show of support for pro-democracy protests. For the perceived transgression against Beijing, Activision Blizzard stripped Chung of thousands of dollars in winnings and banned him from play for 12 months, saying in a blog post that the company took "necessary actions to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future."

Analysts have spoken highly of the NBA's response to Chinese pressure, and less so of Apple's and Activision Blizzard's. But the NBA's tact with China may be hard to replicate for individual brands, given its status as the premier basketball organization on the planet. For companies that have more direct competition on a global scale, the default still seems to be bending the knee – which Gordon says doesn't bode particularly well for what now seems to be an emboldened China in its dealings with American multinational corporations.

"I think 10 years ago, the American companies would have ignored China's demands. But today, they can't bow quickly enough or low enough to China's demands," Gordon says. "China can push around America's biggest and best. It's a real wake-up call about how powerful China is and about how China will use its power."

China has for years exerted pressure on companies hoping to do business within its borders to conform to its ideals, and Gordon and Argenti note they've had success long before this week. American Airlines, United and Delta last year caved to Chinese demands to relist how they reference Taiwan. China has long considered Taiwan its own province despite its stated independence.

"Pretending Taiwan isn't a country for China is just not acceptable, and I can't believe companies are willing to do that. And I can't believe employees and customers are not willing to call them out on it," Argenti says.

What the world is witnessing now is a "huge shift" in how the Western world views China, Gordon says. Since it joined the World Trade Organization in the early 2000s, politicians and economists widely predicted that China would become a more open society as its wealth grew and it gained greater access to a more open and democratic world.

Few predicted the balance of power would shift the other way, he says, as China is now successfully pressuring Western companies to kowtow to its censorship and political ideologies.