That’s why the H&M boycott has broad support in China

The second largest clothing manufacturer in the world, H&M, can no longer be found on Alibaba, JD.com or other leading online stores in China. The company’s app was also removed from all Huawei and Xiaomi phones.

Several physical stores have closed or the red logo has been removed. From Hong Kong in the south to Beijing in the north, demonstrations are taking place outside H&M stores demanding apologies or attempts to prevent customers from entering and buying.

The clients who have arrived there, of course. The mapping service of China’s leading search engine Baidu no longer provides any results during a search on H&M. It is also not possible to order a car from the shops using Didi or other local taxi applications.

The campaign against H&M was launched at the request of the Communist Party’s youth union. “Spreading rumors of boycotting Xinjiang cotton and at the same time wanting to make money in China? Illusions!” The union said on the Chinese Sina Weibo microblog on Wednesday.

The youth union referred to a statement on the H&M website, expressing concern about reports of forced labor among ethnic minorities in the important cotton industry of the Xinjiang region. H&M states in this statement that it intends to end cooperation with subcontractors whose forced labor can be verified.

The fact that the statement had just over a year on its neck created some confusion. But it soon became clear that calls to boycott H&M are part of a larger political game.

Although the statement has been on (H & M’s) official website for more than a year, it has received renewed attention after the EU recently issued Xinjiang-related sanctions, sending strong signals of interference in the internal affairs of China, “explained the Global Times. ., published by the party newspaper Folkets Dagblad, this week.

The EU sanctions, issued together with the United States, Britain and Canada, against four Chinese officials and a local security bureau earlier this week, were justified by the crackdown on ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region. The sanctions were just the latest in a long series of actions that have drawn attention to abuses in the region.

Important cotton industry

The cotton industry is one of the most important industries in this vast region, whose spectacular mountain ranges and vast desert landscapes make up one sixth of China’s land area. More than five million tons of cotton are produced annually in Xinjiang, representing about 90 percent of China’s total production.

In the spring of 2019, the Wall Street Journal released a survey on forced labor among thread manufacturers in the region. The focus was on a company called Huafu Fashion and its cotton yarn-dyed factory in the city of Aksu, which is the largest in the world.

According to the survey, this factory’s staff consisted of ethnic minorities who had previously been in Xinjiang political prison camps, where some two million Uighurs and other Muslim ethnic groups had been detained without trial in recent years. In addition to forced labor, staff at the Aksu plant were subjected to political indoctrination and “military-type exercises” wearing uniforms.

H&M was one of several international companies whose clothing was linked to Huafu Fashion products. In a comment to the Omvärlden newspaper, one of H & M’s press secretaries stated that the company does not use Xinjiang thread, but added at the same time that it is investigating the matter.

In March 2020, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) think tank published a report entitled “Uyghurs for Sale”. There, H&M, as one of the 83 large international companies, was again singled out for using former prisoners of war in Xinjiang to manufacture its products, albeit through a network of subcontractors so complicated that many companies were probably not aware of the matter.

Why H&M?

The statement that prompted a boycott of H&M was issued right after the ASPI report, that is, more than a year ago. Although the timing can be explained by a worsening geopolitical situation, many other clothing manufacturers had made similar statements at the same time.

According to Foreign Policy magazine, one of the reasons H&M ended up at the crossroads may be the overall poor relationship between China and Sweden. Another reason may be that H&M, de facto, as one of the first companies, acted by ending all cooperation with Huafu Fashion in September last year.

Either way, more companies have had similar problems during the week. This is because the call for a boycott has shifted from just H&M to include almost all clothing manufacturers who at some point raised concerns about reports of forced labor in the Xinjiang cotton industry.

The boycott is broad and has great public support. Immediately after the outcome of the Communist Party of China Youth League, movie star Huang Xuan announced that he would be ending his association with H&M.

Huang, who until recently was the Swedish clothing manufacturer’s brand ambassador to China, added that he opposes all attempts to tarnish and spread rumors about China.

Huang, who until recently was the Swedish clothing manufacturer’s brand ambassador to China, added that he opposes all attempts to tarnish and spread rumors about China.

Singer Victoria Song, also an H&M ambassador, followed suit shortly after.

Celebrity names like singer Jackson Yee and actor Wang Yibo soon continued to cancel similar collaborations with Adidas and Nike respectively. As for Nike, the Shanghai Shenhua soccer team has even removed the company’s logo from official photos of the team’s training sessions.

On the Sina Weibo microblogging, the hashtag “I support Xinjiang cotton” attracted more than four billion visits in just two days.

The initiative is driven by political actors. As early as Thursday, the party newspaper Folkets Dagblad listed Nike and, along with Burberry and New Balance and several other companies, as rumors whose products should be boycotted.

Concerns about human rights violations

What these companies have in common is that they are part of the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), a non-profit organization based in Switzerland with the aim of ensuring the sustainability of the global cotton industry. In October last year, BCI removed Xinjiang cotton from its list of approved products for the upcoming fashion season.

In December, the US government announced that it would halt all cotton imports from Xinjiang, due to the risk that “it may have been produced through slave labor in what is one of the most egregious human rights violations occurring today.”

The following month, outgoing US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the Xinjiang genocide a genocide. His successor, Joe Biden’s Foreign Minister Antony Blinken, has reiterated the classification of his representative. Since then, the parliaments of Canada and the Netherlands, among others, have voted to classify the situation in the region as genocide.

The increased attention makes it increasingly difficult for companies to ignore the persecution, despite the Chinese authorities’ categorical denial that there is any abuse in Xinjiang. When the first information about the region’s concentration camps for ethnic minorities began to circulate, Beijing denied the existence of the camps. After the evidence has become overwhelming, the camps are instead believed to be facilities for education, which at the same time fight poverty and religious extremism.

On cotton, Chinese state media accuse the United States and the West of targeting local industries in an effort to undermine the local economy, at a time when US cotton manufacturers are lagging behind Chinese competitors.

Companies are forced to choose

According to Adrian Zenz, researchers whose work has helped uncover the state of Xinjiang, these boycotts are the next step in Beijing’s strategy to soften and silence criticism of developments in the region. In addition to denying the abuses, Zenz says, the regime is also investing in “just crushing and silencing all opposition” with the help of economic sanctions.

Engaging Western companies in the abuses by having them adopt and buy cotton from Xinjiang, in turn, according to Zenz, increases the credibility of the authorities’ narrative that all is well in the Xinjiang concentration camps and factories.

In several cases, they have already succeeded. The Inditex clothing company, which owns, among other things, the Zara clothing brand, quickly removed a similar statement from all of its websites after H&M got into trouble. Japanese clothing chain Muji goes even further by openly expressing its support for Xinjiang’s high-quality cotton both online and in Chinese media.

H&M has also made a statement. But not the kind expected by Folkets Dagblad editors or groups of protesters outside the company’s factories in China.

Instead, H&M published a new statement this week on its Chinese website and microblog Sina Weibo, emphasizing the importance of high standards and transparency in global supply chains. Not using cotton from Xinjiang is not a political position, as H&M “respects Chinese customers” and wants to further develop its presence in the country.

Human Rights Watch describes the situation as a “litmus test” for the fulfillment of human rights commitments by international companies. For H&M, whose sales in China account for just five percent of the company’s total sales, there may be incentives to continue.

For other companies whose economic recovery depends more on China, where the economy has recovered rapidly after the pandemic, the equation is likely to be more problematic.