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In the seemingly-perpetual war of words, major Western brands in China have found themselves in hot soup for expressing concerns about alleged forced labor in Xinjiang province's cotton fields.
The conflict started when Swedish fast-fashion giant H&M announced it would stop sourcing its cotton from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), published in a statement in 2020.
IMAGE: Kyodo News
The decision was based on the fact that the retailer's sourcing partner, Better Cotton Initiative, couldn't confirm that its supply chain was free of forced labor.
Prompted by the statements, which were recently brought to light by Chinese social media users, searches for "H&M" and "HM" yielded no results on Alibaba’s Tmall, JD.com, and Pinduoduo. This is seen as a clear indication of retaliation against the brand.
H&M operates over 400 stores in China, but authorities have encouraged people to boycott any brand that expresses said forced labor concerns.
Social media users on Weibo also rallied together to boycott the Swedish brand, seemingly threatened and angered by publicly-expressed concerns of forced labor and other human rights violations against Uyghurs and Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang's cotton fields.
This has also prompted Chinese celebrities Huang Xuan and Song Qian to sever ties with the brand, declaring solidarity with China.
A cotton picker in Xinjiang. IMAGE: Associated Press / Taiwan News
“The Chinese government is showing its true colors by pressuring companies to be complicit in abuses rather than working together to end violations against Turkic Muslims,” said Human Rights Watch China Director Sophie Richardson. “Beijing may find that lashing out at companies only amplifies precisely the concerns they expressed.”
Being pulled into the conflict are U.S. and German footwear giants, Nike and Adidas.
The former had also expressed concern "about reports of forced labor in, and connected to, Xinjiang.”
IMAGE: Yahoo! News
“Nike does not source products from the XUAR, and we have confirmed with our contract suppliers that they are not using textiles or spun yarn from the region,” the statement reads. Much like H&M, Nike also lost some brand ambassadors following the rediscovery of this statement, including Wang Yibo and Tan Songyun.
The Three Stripes, too, have lost their fair share, with brand ambassadors Dilraba Dilmurat, Jackson Yee, Eason Chan, and five other celebrities saying 'Auf Wiedersehen' to the brand. That's a lot of people, considering their reach.
SEE ALSO: Alibaba under fire for offering face recognition software that can identify Uyghurs
But that's not the end of it. Other major brands like New Balance, Calvin Klein, Uniqlo, and Converse have also been the target of pro-China critics.
IMAGE: CFP / China Daily
This comes after the U.S., the European Union (EU), Britain, and Canada imposed sanctions on several Chinese officials for allegedly committing said human rights violations.
"For our part, the business community has spent the last two years working to end any nexus with Xinjiang or with Uyghurs trafficked to other parts of China in order to undercut one component of the campaign of oppression against Uyghurs — forced labor," reads a joint statement from several U.S. trade groups.
Despite the united front against Xinjiang's human rights violations, a number of brands have decided to distance themselves from the conflict, in an effort to retain business in China. They've been listed here.
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Cover image sourced from Associated Press / Footwear News and CNS Photo / Global Times.
