H&M bends to Chinese Communist Party to change map boycotted by Vietnamese, officials also issued a warning

Swedish international clothing brand H&M, fresh from a boycott in China, has sparked a boycott by Vietnamese netizens after the Communist Party’s official media said it had changed the “problematic map” “at the first opportunity. The Vietnamese Foreign Ministry also warned that foreign companies need to respect Vietnam’s “sovereignty in the South China Sea”.

At the regular press conference of the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry on April 8, a reporter from Taiwan’s Central News Agency asked about the boycott of H&M by Vietnamese netizens. The spokesman answered the question, did not mention whether the Vietnamese official action against H&M, only that the Vietnamese side is very concerned about the matter, and asked the business operators in Vietnam to strictly comply with the provisions of Vietnamese law, and “respect Vietnam’s sovereignty over the Hoang Sa (China called Xisha) and Truong Sa (China called Nansha) Islands and the related rights of the East Sea (China called the South China Sea) related waters “.

The Central News Agency reported that H&M has 12 stores in Vietnam, five of which are in the capital Hanoi. The reporter visited two H&M stores in Hanoi on the 8th and found only single-digit customers inside the stores. h&m shopkeepers were reluctant to comment too much, but the merchants next to them said that h&m’s business was indeed affected after netizens launched a boycott.

A Hanoi citizen said he had bought many H&M products in the past, but he stopped buying them after the incident. He said that H&M wanted to please Beijing and change the map, “I feel that the Vietnamese people are not respected”.

The incident started with a notice in the Shanghai official media on April 2. According to the report, a “problematic China map” appeared on H&M’s website (hm.com) and the operator had “corrected the error at the first time” after receiving notification from Shanghai officials.

The report did not specify what was wrong with the “problematic Chinese map”, but it was rumored to be related to the “nine-dash line” in the South China Sea, which in turn was related to the Sino-Vietnamese territorial dispute. The day the news broke, Vietnamese netizens launched a boycott of H&M, H&M Hanoi Nguyen Chi Thanh Road (Nguyen Chi Thanh) store’s Facebook page was once “filling up”.