A while back H&M and Nike issued statements on their sites about forced labor being used to produce cotton in China's Xinjiang province. Human rights groups and activists and United Nations rights experts previously accused China of using mass detention camps, forced labor and sterilization of women on Uyghurs in Xinjiang. But the Chinese government always stated the Uyghurs camps are education and training centres designed to fight extremism.
Last year also Swedish clothing giant H&M expressed concerns about the issue and decided it will no longer source cotton from Xinjiang, ending relationships with a Chinese yarn producer over "forced labor".
In a report now removed from its site, the company stated "H&M Group is deeply concerned by reports from civil society organisations and media that include accusations of forced labour and discrimination of ethnoreligious minorities in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). We strictly prohibit any type of forced labour in our supply chain, regardless of the country or region."
The American sportswear multinational stated on its site: "Nike is committed to ethical and responsible manufacturing and we uphold international labor standards. We are concerned about reports of forced labor in, and connected to, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Nike does not source products from the XUAR and we have confirmed with our contract suppliers that they are not using textiles or spun yarn from the region."
While these statements weren't issued recently (Nike’s statement isn's even dated), both the companies and other Western brands are currently facing a backlash from China.
The backlash first hit H&M: on Wednesday H&M products were removed from Chinese e-commerce platforms Tmall, Taobao, JD.com and Pinduoduo. Its mobile app was banned on Huawei, Xiaomi, Vivo and Tencent's store, while physical store information was removed from providers like Baidu and also from Didi, the equivalent of Uber.
Thursday it was the turn of Nike, Uniqlo and Adidas: Nike was for example removed from Taobao and Dewu. Yesterday the topic was trending on China's social media Weibo that condemned the statements, but more backlash followed as celebrities - among them Chinese actors Wang Yibo and Tan Songyun - cancelled contracts with brands.
China Global Television Network (CGTN) stated on Twitter that actor, dancer, singer and rapper Wang Yibo, who had a contract with Nike, had announced he opposed "any act to smear China". Actor Huang Xuan and actress Song Qian, brand ambassadors for H&M since last year, also stated they would no longer work with the company.
All the celebrities who have deals with Adidas including Eason Chan, Angelababy and Jackson Yee among the others, and Chinese ambassadors for Uniqlo, Converse, Puma, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger and New Balance also terminated their contracts.
Award-winning Chinese actress Zhou Dongyu and actor and model Song Weilong also quit their roles of Burberry ambassadors. The company was then removed from a prominent digital space: the label’s trademark plaid was indeed erased from the skins available for the characters in Tencent's video game "Honor of Kings" (and this happened merely 48 hours after the skins were released...). Burberry is currently the first luxury brand to be caught in the political row, but may not be the last.
All the companies that faced backlash - such as Adidas, New Balance, and Burberry - are members of the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI). The group promoting sustainable cotton production announced last year it was suspending its approval of cotton sourced from Xinjiang, mentioning concerns about human rights issues.
While on Weibo Chinese companies stating they are using Xinjiang cotton were praised by the social media users, stock prices of many Western companies sank and shares of Chinese domestic companies such as Li Ning and Anta Sports (that issued a statement saying it will continue to use cotton from Xinjiang and announced it started the procedure to withdraw from BCI), went up.
The backlash against these companies may not have been triggered by their statements about imports coming from the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR). After all Nike’s statement doesn’t even have a specific date and seems to have been issued a while back.
The decisions against these brands may then be linked with the US-China tensions: last July the US government had issued an advisory to warn businesses about forced labor in Xinjiang; then, in December, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced that, with a "Withhold Release Order", the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) personnel at all U.S. ports of entry would detain shipments containing cotton and cotton products originating from the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) and its subordinate and affiliated entities as well as any products made in whole or in part with or derived from that cotton, such as apparel, garments, and textiles.
In the past week, the US, Canada, the UK and the European Union placed new sanctions on Chinese officials over alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang. China issued its own measures then, sanctioning European lawmakers and institutions, so the backlash against the apparel and fashion companies this week may be the consequence of the current relationships between these entitles and China.
As the number of fashion companies and mass-market brands facing such backlash may grow, the industry is treading a fine line. Fashion companies and groups have indeed turned into the protagonists of a difficult balancing act to keep happy multiple entities.
Large fashion companies doing business all over the world must be careful about goods made in Xinjiang as they will not be accepted in the US; the same companies may aspire to make business in China, but may face further backlash there for their positions on Xinjiang's cotton. Besides, companies also have to keep consumers happy, releasing trendy products, but nowadays consumers want to buy products with a message that may speak to them about sustainability and social issues, so ignoring appeal to human rights may mean losing consumers.
In a nutshell, some fashion companies – that in previous occasions were rarely transparent when it came to exploiting workers in countries where they manufacture their garments, from China to Vietnam, from Myanmar to Bangladesh and India – are finding themselves in rather difficult positions. China irepresents a key country for these brands that have already been badly hit by Coronavirus and who can’t afford losing this market.
There may be different consequences to this backlash: some companies may be retreating from specific initiatives or stop expressing their critical views or removing statements about not condoning any form of modern slavery among its suppliers, including forced, bonded or involuntary prison labour.
At the moment some groups remain silent (Amazon never expressed its opinion about the issue); Hugo Boss issued a statement highlighting the quality of the materials from China, and in particular from Xinjiang; Japanese retailer Muji began to advertise products made with "Xinjiang cotton"; Inditex removed its policy against forced labour from its website and the BCI Shanghai Representative Office issued a statement today claiming that China strictly abides by the BCI audit policy and has never found a case of forced labour. As consumers remain vigilant, the story makes you realise that in the modern battles for political and financial hegemony, fashion may have a (key) role too.
Comments