{"id":211346,"date":"2021-03-25T18:52:46","date_gmt":"2021-03-25T15:52:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/hm-nike-join-brands-facing-boycotts-over-statements-on-xinjiang-cotton\/"},"modified":"2021-03-25T18:52:46","modified_gmt":"2021-03-25T15:52:46","slug":"hm-nike-join-brands-facing-boycotts-over-statements-on-xinjiang-cotton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/hm-nike-join-brands-facing-boycotts-over-statements-on-xinjiang-cotton\/","title":{"rendered":"#H&M, Nike join brands facing boycotts over statements on Xinjiang cotton"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#H&M, Nike join brands facing boycotts over statements on Xinjiang cotton<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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Nike\u00a0and\u00a0Adidas\u00a0came under attack on\u00a0Chinese\u00a0social<\/a>\u00a0media\u00a0on Thursday\u00a0over\u00a0past comments the fashion\u00a0brands\u00a0have made about labor conditions in\u00a0Xinjiang, part of a diplomatic row between China and the West.<\/p>\n

The sportswear companies were the latest caught up in a backlash prompted by a\u00a0Chinese\u00a0government call to stop foreign\u00a0brands\u00a0from tainting China\u2019s name as internet users found statements they had made in the past on\u00a0Xinjiang.<\/p>\n

Chinese\u00a0state\u00a0media\u00a0had singled out H&M on Wednesday\u00a0over\u00a0a statement reported last year where the Swedish fashion retailer said it was deeply concerned by reports of accusations of forced labor in\u00a0Xinjiang, and that it did not source products from the\u00a0Chinese\u00a0region.<\/p>\n

Both\u00a0Nike\u00a0and\u00a0Adidas, which have been growing rapidly in China, have said previously that they do not source products or yarn from the\u00a0Xinjiang\u00a0region.\u00a0Adidas\u00a0declined to comment on Thursday and\u00a0Nike\u00a0did not respond to requests for further comment.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, China denied allegations of human rights abuses by its officials in the western region of\u00a0Xinjiang, home to Muslim Uighurs, after the European Union, United States, Britain and Canada imposed sanctions on the officials.<\/p>\n

Beijing hit back with retaliatory sanctions on European lawmakers, scholars and institutions.<\/p>\n

Some internet users said they would stop buying\u00a0Nike\u00a0and will support local\u00a0brands\u00a0such as Li Ning and Anta, while others told\u00a0Adidas\u00a0to leave China.<\/p>\n

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\"Cotton
Cotton is harvested by a worker operating a cotton picking machine in a field in Xinjiang, China.<\/figcaption>
VCG via Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The dispute creates a dilemma for Western companies who must balance the desire to expand their business in China against the views of consumers in their home markets.<\/p>\n

\u201cBrands\u00a0must not rescind on their human rights responsibilities in the face of this pressure,\u201d said Chloe Cranston of Anti-Slavery International, a member of the Coalition to End Forced Labour in the Uighur Region.<\/p>\n

BOYCOTT CALLS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Shares of Anta Sports Products and Li Ning surged, while shares in\u00a0Adidas, Inditex and H&M fell on Thursday.<\/p>\n

State tabloid Global Times said Spain\u2019s Inditex, owner of Zara, had \u201cquietly removed\u201d a statement on\u00a0Xinjiang\u00a0from its English and Spanish-language websites.<\/p>\n

An Inditex webpage stating that the company was highly concerned about reports alleging\u00a0social\u00a0and labor malpractice in various supply chains among ethnic Uighurs in\u00a0Xinjiang\u00a0was live on March 24, a Google cache showed, but now app<\/a>ears to be unavailable.<\/p>\n

Inditex did not respond to a request for comment. Inditex has previously said it does not have any commercial relations in\u00a0Xinjiang.<\/p>\n

Chinese\u00a0internet users also targeted the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), a group that promotes sustainable cotton production which said in October it was suspending its approval of cotton sourced from\u00a0Xinjiang, citing human rights concerns.<\/p>\n

BCI members include\u00a0Nike,\u00a0Adidas, H&M and Japan\u2019s Fast Retailing. The Better Cotton Initiative website also stopped working on Thursday. The organization did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you boycott\u00a0Xinjiang\u00a0cotton, we\u2019ll boycott you. Either\u00a0Adidas\u00a0quits BCI, or get out of China,\u201d one internet user wrote.<\/p>\n

H&M said on Wednesday it respected\u00a0Chinese\u00a0consumers and that it was committed to long-term investment and development in China.<\/p>\n

But by Thursday morning, H&M did not exist on some\u00a0Chinese\u00a0store locator maps. Searches for H&M stores on Baidu Maps yielded no results. The retailer\u2019s official store on Alibaba\u2019s Tmall, an e-commerce platform, was inaccessible.<\/p>\n

At a daily\u00a0media\u00a0briefing at China\u2019s foreign ministry, spokeswoman Hua Chunying, when asked about H&M, held up a photograph of Black Americans picking cotton.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was in the US when Black slaves were forced to pick cotton in the fields,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Hua then held up a second photograph of cotton fields in\u00a0Xinjiang.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore than 40 percent of the cotton in\u00a0Xinjiang\u00a0is harvested by machinery, so the alleged forced labor is non-existent.\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#H&M, Nike join brands facing boycotts over statements on Xinjiang cotton” Nike\u00a0and\u00a0Adidas\u00a0came under attack on\u00a0Chinese\u00a0social\u00a0media\u00a0on Thursday\u00a0over\u00a0past comments the fashion\u00a0brands\u00a0have made about labor conditions in\u00a0Xinjiang, part of a diplomatic row between China and the West. The sportswear companies were the latest caught up in a backlash prompted by a\u00a0Chinese\u00a0government call to stop foreign\u00a0brands\u00a0from tainting China\u2019s name…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":211347,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/03\/china-cotton-boycott-threat.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[99246,73653,77306,4973,66404,99461,98346],"class_list":["post-211346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-3-25-21","tag-adidas","tag-boycotts","tag-china","tag-nike","tag-sportswear","tag-xinjiang"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}