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• n  a former Chinese custom of touching the ground with the forehead as a sign of respect or submission
• v  bend the knees and bow in a servile manner
• v  try to gain favor by cringing or flattering
  He is always kowtowing to his boss

• BILL GATES Forget the antitrust battle: having to kowtow to mere Senators is distasteful enough.
• She very much had to kowtow to them.
• Carefully worded official apologies have landed far short of the five-star kowtow demanded by Beijing, senior Tokyo officials occasionally deny atrocities and just last April a new .

• kotow
• scrape
• genuflect
• fawn
• toady
• truckle
• bootlick
• suck up

News & Articles

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• Some Foreign Telcos Reportedly Defied NSA Phone Spying Order
  T-Mobile and Verizon reportedly refused to kowtow to the National Security Agency's demand to collect all phone call records. According to the Wall Street Journal , because T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless are owned by European parent companies, they were able to successfully refuse the NSA's court order.
  June 14, 2013 - TechCrunch
• Some Foreign Telcos Reportedly Defied NSA Phone Spying Order
  T-Mobile and Verizon reportedly refused to kowtow to the National Security Agency's demand to collect all phone call records. According to the Wall Street Journal , because T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless are owned by European parent companies, they were able to successfully refuse the NSA's court order.
  June 14, 2013 - TechCrunch

Quotes

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• Michael Danby in Reuters India
  I would hope that we could have good relations with China both economically and politically, but at the same time not pre-emptively kowtow to them on human rights whether it's in Tibet or China more generally,Labor lawmaker Michael Danby, who...
• Russel Norman in National Business Review
  Dr Norman said "you can't save whales by killing them" and the proposal was a "mistake." "We will soon learn whether our Government will stand up for our wishes or kowtow to Tokyo."
• Bobby Jindal in CNN
  Jindal, a potential 2012 presidential candidate, told the Republican audience he would "not be brow beaten on this, and I will not kowtow to their correctness." "My answer to the question is very simple: 'Do you want the president to fail?'...