H&M sells canvas rugs with a world map on them (photo from the company’s website)
H&M, the international clothing brand that has faced a boycott in China over the Xinjiang cotton issue, was interviewed by the Chinese Communist Party authorities on Friday (April 2). Chinese officials said that the company had a “problematic map of China” on its official website, and that the company that operates the website “corrected the error as soon as it was notified. However, officials did not specify which map or what was wrong with it.
Several Chinese media and websites on Friday quoted “NetInfo Shanghai” as saying that the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Planning and Natural Resources immediately notified H&M of the existence of a “problematic map of China” on its website (hm.com) after a netizen reported it to the administration. The Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Planning and Natural Resources immediately notified it to correct the problem quickly.
“After H&M’s official website operator, Haynes & Morris (Shanghai) Commercial Co., Ltd. was notified to correct the error at the first opportunity, it was then jointly interviewed by the city’s Planning and Natural Resources Bureau and the city’s Internet Information Office,” a statement from Shanghai authorities said.
The statement did not specify what was wrong with the faulty map of China, which could not be found on H&M’s official website, except for a few products with a patterned map of the world, with only the continents indicated on the patterned map.
“In the interview, China ordered H&M to run the network according to the law and to “seriously study the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Network Security, the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Surveying and Mapping, the Regulations on Map Management, and other laws and regulations, to make a firm awareness of the national map, and to really do ‘Standardized use of maps can not be wrong at all’.
H&M did not immediately respond to a phone call or email from Reuters requesting comment.
This is the latest trouble for the Sweden-based company in China.
H&M has faced a massive, officially encouraged boycott of its products in China after statements expressing concern about alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang in 2020 and saying it would no longer use cotton produced there recently resurfaced on social media. Last week, the company said it would work to regain the trust and confidence of its Chinese customers, colleagues and business partners. But Chinese official media called the statement “insincere.
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