Qingdao Taiguang Shoe Company, a Nike OEM (online photo)
The Chinese Communist Party-affiliated organization, the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League, recently launched a boycott of Swedish company H&M via Weibo, claiming that its refusal to use Xinjiang cotton was “eating Chinese rice and smashing Chinese bowls”. Recently, this Xinjiang cotton storm continues to burn, the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece “Global Times” editor-in-chief Hu Xijin but anxious, repeatedly issued an article to put out the fire, what is the reason? Experts have analyzed the mystery behind it.
The Global Times published an article on March 26, “Today, bad people are mixed in the masses of H&M boycott! The Global Times published an article on March 26th, “Today, there are bad people in the masses boycotting H&M!”, saying, “We have to be wary of those less sensible moves and forces that try to muddy the waters, senior black, and engage in accelerationism.” The article on the 25th, “Attention Nike boycotters! Some people have already started to smear you with rumors! said that foreign media “speculate that Chinese netizens are burning sneakers in protest, which will easily create a negative impression that Chinese netizens are brainless cynics who only know how to express their discontent through extreme means.”
The famous self-publisher Wen Zhao pointed out that the real meaning of the Global Times is to tell Chinese netizens, “You boycott this and that, in fact, are sending shells to the so-called Western anti-China forces, you should hurry to stop it, the more you perform, the more widely spread abroad, the worse the impact will be, of course, it can not directly say so, it said foreign media in the mouth Of course, it can’t say that directly, it says that foreign media are smearing you, but the implication is that you should not do those things. The Global Times is now throwing cold water on the boycott of foreign goods in a roundabout way”.
A March 26 article in the Nanfang Daily, an organ of the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, echoed the Global Times, saying, “We should be wary of irrational moves and advanced blackness that try to muddy the water while boycotting, so that the boycott will not backfire.”
Interestingly, before that, Zhou Lei, a senior media personality living in Germany, said, “You can also observe whether the media will say to be rational and patriotic, which is very possible. What is the meaning of rational patriotism? It is you watch, we have this official media, this party pointed out the direction, you scale take.”
“But it’s like calling for a people’s riot, it’s very difficult to control by its very nature,” Zhou Lei said, “because it’s the Internet era, it’s very easy to expand this thing.”
Zhou Lei believes that the Chinese Communist Party initially took the H & M knife, is looking for a soft persimmon to pinch, but did not expect to get out of hand. “Because the sanctions against Xinjiang cotton from the United States, according to the thief to capture the king, to fight back then should first go to fight the United States or take the United States enterprise sacrificial flag, it did not, it went to get Sweden. But China’s little pink people, under the so-called patriotism Education, now made like a coyote, the Swiss Good Cotton Association under the brand all dug out, this siege will be big.”
“How to carry on? The back immediately involved Nike. Nike is first of all the leading sports sector, and it is not like H & M is a fast-selling brand, there is no technical content, Nike many sports shoes and sportswear, the technical content is very large, the national team are using, how to ban it? But the fire has burned up. I think it is more interesting to continue to observe, how it is controlled below, the fire burned again, let others pain, do not burn to it finally can not end. If Nike is going to withdraw, affecting hundreds of thousands of workers in China”.
According to statistics, Nike now has 107 factories in China.
The company’s main goal is to make sure that the company’s products and services are available to the public. Wen Zhaoge analysis, one of Hu Xijin’s fears is to boycott this boycott that, to make the business environment very tense, the withdrawal of foreign capital, but also to stimulate Europe and the United States to take more severe measures against Chinese companies, “your side to say justifiably, these foreign companies both to earn Chinese money, but also to smash the Chinese bowl, the Chinese people do not promise. Then the people of Europe and the United States also do not promise it, right, you are ready to engage in Boxer Rebellion style harassment of foreign enterprises in China, your side and let Chinese companies to go public in Europe and the United States, and to engage in acquisitions, to enter the market of other countries, that people in Europe and the United States also do not promise it, right?”
“So a direct result of it is that the general public in the West will have an increased dislike for China as a country, which is inevitable. This will push public opinion against the Chinese Communist Party higher and higher,” Zhou Lei said.
According to a Pew Research Center survey released last October covering 14 developed countries in Europe, the United States and Asia, negative opinion of China (the Chinese Communist Party) in the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United States, South Korea, Spain and Canada has risen to its highest point in more than a decade.
According to Zhou Lei, the tone of the West’s resistance to China has been set since the days of Trump, because everyone sees the CCP’s ambition to control the world. “After all, in the end, it’s not exactly a battle of interests, it’s a battle of value systems, something that can never be reconciled. At the Time, U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo was running around organizing a Western alliance to work together against the Communist Party, and that’s something that Blinken, the Secretary of State in the new U.S. administration now, continues to do.”
“The West as a whole has not formed a strong alliance, and this is not enough pressure on the CCP,” said Dr. Xie Tian, the John M. Olin Chair Professor in Business at the University of South Carolina’s Aiken School of Business. “I think the international community needs to step up its efforts and needs to recognize the CCP more. Its massive bribes, its various blue and Gold policies, have really bought a lot of Western supporters”.
Zhou Lei, who knows a lot about Europe, agrees that there are many holders of Chinese interests in the EU who also lobby for the CCP, “but in the West there is after all an issue of popular election, which means that its public opinion is still very important, and the people believe in the existence of forced labor in Xinjiang.
Although, as Xie Tian said, the Western alliance is not strong enough, Zhou Lei remains optimistic, “This time the sanctions are definitely a coordinated action, which shows that this alliance has been formed, and now it is getting more and more decent, and its rhythm has been coordinated out, once it gets used to it, step by step and then fight, it should see the Western alliance getting tighter and tighter. “
On the 22nd of this month, the European Union, along with the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, made a rare coordinated effort to impose sanctions on Beijing over the Communist Party’s human rights violations in Xinjiang’s Uighur region. This is the first time in more than 30 years since June 4, 1989.
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