“The ugly face of the Western colonizers is painted on snow-white cotton.” This is a text from a rap song that appeared on social media in China, which led to a boycott of leading Western fashion brands.
The hashtag “I support cotton in Xinjiang” gathered 4 billion followers who refused to buy clothes and shoes from H&M, Nike, Adidas and other famous fashion brands.
A video on WeChat showing a man burning a pair of Nike sneakers on his balcony has been liked and shared millions of times.
“H&M’s clothes are rags! They don’t deserve our Xinjiang cotton!” Says one of Weibo’s most popular comments.
Popular Chinese actor Wang Yibo terminated his contract with Nike in response to the company’s statement that it was concerned about the exploitation of child labor in Xinjiang.
Wang, who has gained international acclaim through the drama “The Untamed” and has 38 million followers on Weibo, said he opposes “any act of discrediting China.”
Actresses Zhou Donggu and Victoria Song have suspended their contracts with Western brands because “they do not respect the Chinese people and government.”
The boycott of Chinese influencers, who have more power over consumer behavior than the West, was followed by millions of people who declared that Western brand goods no longer existed for them.
Where did the scandal come from?
It all started with poct of Komynicticheckata mladezhka liga part of kitayckata komynictichecka paptiya where ce kazva, flashover mapkite pazppoctpanyavat clyxove charter boykot na pamyka in Cintszyan, no cashtevpemenno ickat ea pechelyat papi in Kitay.
“Can H&M continue to make money in the Chinese market? Not anymore,” said Chinese government spokesman Xu Guixiang. His comment escalated tensions between fashion retailers such as H&M, Burberry, Nike and Adidas, and the Chinese government.
These Western brands have said they will not buy cotton from Xinjiang due to fears of child labor.
Multinational companies are avoiding geopolitics, but reports of labor camps in Xinjiang, as well as increased social media fervor urging corporations to take political positions, make it much harder to avoid compromise.
In fact, the scandal is not new at all, as early as 2019 a number of global retailers came under the spotlight due to supplies of cotton from Xinjiang.
Human rights activists say the Uighur minority is being persecuted there.
According to them, the massive human rights violations in the region, including the imprisonment of more than a million people in internment and re-education camps, forced labor, mass sterilization of women and restrictions on religion, culture and language, are cultural genocide.
And they blame big fashion brands for using Xinjiang cotton products.
Japanese retailers Muji and Uniqlo have attracted attention after pointing out Xinjiang cotton content as a competitive advantage in their clothing. H&M, Esprit and Adidas were also named among the companies allegedly at the end of the supply chain, which includes Xinjiang cotton products, according to an investigation by the Wall Street Journal.
China naturally denies the allegations of human rights abuses and claims that it provides vocational training and that measures are needed to combat extremism. The Chinese state media (CGTN) shared a video on Weubo, in which it is claimed that it shows the reality of the banquet in Xinjiang.
There are some modern automation systems and quotes from the Egyptian company, according to which people “worked” to work there for high profits.
But the pressure has forced retailers such as Nike and H&M to say they are giving up the cotton in question. Statements were made by the companies last year, but they reappeared in recent days. On March 22, 2021, the United States, Britain, Canada and the EU imposed sanctions on China for human rights violations against the Uighurs in Xinjiang.
The sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, are aimed at senior officials in the northwestern region. Then the Celestial Empire struck back. It also imposed sanctions on the EU, affecting 10 individuals and four organizations in Brussels.
The response
But the more severe punishment came from consumers. For the Chinese, the world’s largest fast fashion retailer, H&M, has virtually ceased to exist. Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) has been deleted from the leading applications for online trading, daily offers and others.
The application of the largest shared travel service in China – Didi, stopped recognizing the brand as a real destination. The search for H&M in various Chinese card applications, including Baidu Maps, did not yield any results, as if the company’s 400 stores in the Asian country had disappeared.
H&M’s searches on platforms operated by China’s largest online trading companies – Alibaba Group Holding, Pinduoduo and JD.com – have not shown results. Numerous Chinese shopping apps for Android have removed H&M from their offerings.
Burberry also faced a blow from China. The company lost its Chinese brand ambassador, and its popular design was removed from a famous video game.
Dozens of Chinese celebrities have also terminated their contracts with Converse, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger and Uniqlo.
The result
Shares of Nike fell more than 3% last Thursday on Wall Street, Adidas sank more than 6%. In London, Burberry lost more than 4% and H&M – nearly 2% in Sweden. The boycott of the Asian country is a serious blow to Western companies.
H&M’s sales in China are SEK 2.9 billion ($ 339 million) in the last 12 months. Chinese consumers make up 40% of Burberry’s customers and spend about $ 4.6 billion a year on Nike products.
And before the boycott, consulting firm Bain predicts that China will buy 48 percent more luxury goods in 2020 than the previous year, which will cost $ 52.6 billion.
Therefore, the sharp reaction of the Chinese shocked the other brands, and some of them decided not to go to war. Skechers said it would continue to buy Uighur cotton. Inditex, the owner of Zara, removed from its website the statement that the allegations of forced labor aroused “great concern”.
And what about the yigypites?
Xinjiang, China’s largest region, produces about one-fifth of the world’s cotton. It is home to 12 million Chinese Yigis, a Muslim Turkic group that is considered culturally and ethnically close to Central Asian countries.
In recent decades, the mass migration of Han Chinese (the ethnic majority from China) to Xinjiang has put pressure on the Egyptians.
This has led to large-scale measures of security and a comprehensive program for state surveillance, which, according to critics, violates human rights.
China says that such measures are necessary to combat separatism and terrorism. In January, the administration of then-US President Donald Trump banned all cotton imports from the region, as well as products made by him, and declared the incident a “genocide.”
At the time, the workers’ rights consortium estimated that Xinjiang materials were used in more than 1.5 billion garments imported annually by American traders.
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