An eruption of Chinese hurt feelings about a one-year-old statement on Uighurs by the world’s largest clothing brand has further undermined an investment deal between Europe and China that only months ago was described as a diplomatic coup for Beijing.
Swedish multinational H&M suddenly became the focus of an extraordinary wave of anger as a statement about concerns over forced labour in Xinjiang was widely circulated online.
“Spreading rumours to boycott Xinjiang cotton while trying to make money in China? Wishful thinking!” said China’s Communist Youth League in a widely shared social media post.
That anger spread to US footwear giant Nike, German sportswear rival Adidas and Britain’s luxury Burberry and threatened dozens of other multinationals on Thursday, as other old statements over concerns about labour conditions in Xinjiang were spread online, with the stoking of state-controlled media.
“There are many foreign companies that have released statements which ‘cut ties’ with Xinjiang cotton in the past two years. This included the Better Cotton Initiative members Burberry, Adidas, Nike, New Balance and others,” said the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter. Better Cotton Initiative is a Swiss-based not-for-profit organisation that last year said its members would no longer source cotton from Xinjiang, citing concerns about forced labour.
Chinese celebrities quickly cancelled sponsorship deals with named companies while European business people engaged in the world’s second market worried that it would further undermine political support for the ratification of an investment deal agreed to weeks before the Biden administration came into office.
TV stars Wang Yibo and Tan Songyun said on Thursday they would end all promotional partnerships with Nike.
The furore came days after Europe joined the US, Canada and the UK in sanctioning Chinese officials involved in human rights abuses to Muslims in Xinjiang in China’s far-west.
China’s foreign ministry responded with an extraordinary rhetorical attack that ranged over the six million Jews killed by Nazi Germany, the millions killed by the French army in colonial Algeria and Britain’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade.
“The days when foreign powers could force China to open its doors with cannons are long gone,” said Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying.
Beijing also imposed sanctions on European officials and the Mercator Institute of China Studies, whose board includes Joerg Wuttke, the Beijing-base president of the European Chamber of Commerce in China.
Mr Wuttke told The Financial Times the ratification of the EU-China investment deal would now likely be put on the back burner.
H&M is a member of the chamber, which said it would not talk directly about the Swedish retailer’s case but said European companies were “caught between a rock and a hard place”.
“On the one side, public opinion in Europe is demanding that companies demonstrate clear and transparent corporate social responsibility principles. On the other, they are potentially subjected to public backlash in China if, through demonstrating that they are acting responsibly and that their supply chains are beyond reproach, they are perceived to be saying something that is ‘anti-China’, ” it said.
Searches for H&M were blocked on China’s giant e-commerce sites Alibaba, JD.com and Pinduoduo but at Beijing’s bricks-and-mortar stores, shoppers continued to buy from the brands at the centre of the blizzard of outrage.
Young Beijingers were queuing outside its flagship store in Sanlitun, a fashionable shopping area, waiting for a newly launched shoe while customers were also braving the Nike and H&M stores.
“I know about the boycott, but it is a bit of a complicated issue concerning politics,” said Si Jie, an engineer, as he left the H&M store.
Other shoppers were much more responsive to the officially sanction anger. “If a brand insulted China, I will definitely not buy it,” said 19-year-old college student Sun Liwen.
Chen Chen, a 23-year old fashion designer, agreed. “If my favourite brand was boycotted, I would stop buying it, and would not buy it again — even after the boycott finished,” she said.
CHINA CORRESPONDENT
Will Glasgow is The Australian's China correspondent. In 2018 he won the Keith McDonald Award for Business Journalist of the Year. He previously worked at The Australian Financial Review.
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