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When Swedish fast-fashion giant H&M said in September it was ending its relationship with a Chinese supplier accused of using forced labor, a few Chinese social media accounts dedicated to the textile industry took note. But overall, the moment passed without fanfare.
Six months later, Beijing’s online scandal machine kicked in. This time his anger was ruthless.
The Communist Party’s youth wing denounced H&M on social media and posted a file photo of slaves on a cotton plantation in Mississippi. Official news outlets were crammed with their own indignant memes and hashtags. Patriotic netizens have carried the message through far and wide corners of the Chinese internet.
Within hours, a tsunami of nationalist fury swept through H&M, Nike, Uniqlo and other international clothing brands, becoming the latest eruption of Chinese politics in its western region of Xinjiang, a major cotton producer.
The crisis that clothing brands face today is familiar to many foreign companies in China. The Communist Party has for years used the country’s gigantic consumer market to force international companies to keep pace with its political sensibilities, or at least not to openly challenge them.
But the latest episode illustrated the growing skill of the Chinese government in stoking storms of patriotic anger to punish companies that violate this pact.
In the case of H&M, the timing of the fury seemed to be dictated not by anything from the retailer, but by the sanctions imposed on Chinese officials last week by the United States, the European Union, Britain and Canada in relation to Xinjiang. China has placed hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in the region in indoctrination camps and used harsh methods to get them to work in factories and other employers.
“The hate-fest part isn’t sophisticated; it’s the same logic they’ve followed for decades, ”said Xiao Qiang, a researcher at the School of Information at the University of California at Berkeley and founder of China Digital Times, a website that tracks Internet controls Chinese. But “their ability to control it is improving,” he said.
“They know how to enlighten these ultra-pro-government and nationalist users,” Xiao continued. “They are getting very good at it. They know exactly what to do.
On Monday, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Zhao Lijian, dismissed the idea that Beijing had led the boycott campaign against H&M and other brands.
“These foreign companies refuse to use Xinjiang cotton purely on the basis of lies,” Zhao said at a press briefing. “Of course, this will trigger the dislike and anger of the Chinese people. Should the government even encourage and guide this? “
After the Communist Youth League sparked outrage on Wednesday, other government-backed groups and state news outlets fanned the flames.
They posted memes offering new meanings behind the letters H and M: mian hua (cotton), huang miu (ridiculous), mo hei (smear). The state-run Xinhua News Agency published an illustration depicting the Better Cotton Initiative, a group that had expressed concerns about forced labor in Xinjiang, as a blindfolded puppet controlled by two hands that had the motif of an American flag. .
The buzz quickly caught the attention of the highest levels in Beijing. On Thursday, a spokeswoman for the Department of Foreign Affairs held up a photo of slaves in American cotton fields during a press briefing.
The posts were amplified by highly followed but largely non-political people on social media.
Squirrel Video, a Weibo account dedicated to silly videos, shared the original Communist Youth League post on H&M with its 10 million subscribers. A gadget blogger in Chengdu with 1.4 million subscribers shared a clip showing a worker removing an H&M sign from a mall. A user from Beijing who posts about TV stars highlighted artists who had terminated their contracts with Adidas and other targeted brands.
“China today is not the one that anyone can intimidate!” he wrote to his nearly seven million followers. “We don’t ask for trouble, but neither are we afraid of trouble.”
A fashion influencer named Wei Ya held a live video event on Friday selling products made with cotton from Xinjiang. In her Weibo post announcing the event, she made sure to brand the Communist Youth League.
On Monday, news sites broadcast a rap video that combined the cotton issue with some recent popular attack lines against Western powers: “How can a country where 500,000 people have died from Covid-19 claim the Heights?”
A Weibo user posted a lush animated video that he said he worked through the night making. It shows white hooded men pointing guns at black cotton pickers and ends in a lynching.
“These are your foolish acts; we would never do it, ”one caption reads.
Less than two hours after the user shared the video, it was reposted by Global Times, a party-controlled newspaper known for its nationalist tone.
Many netizens who speak out in such campaigns are motivated by genuine patriotism, even though the Chinese government pays some people to post comments on the party line. Others, like the traffic-hungry blog accounts, ridiculed in China as “marketing accounts”, are probably more pragmatic. They just want the clicks.
In these times of mass fervor, it can be difficult to tell where the official propaganda ends and the opportunistic pursuit of profit begins.
“I think the line between the two is increasingly blurred,” said Chenchen Zhang, assistant professor of politics at Queen’s University in Belfast who studies Chinese Internet discourse.
“Nationalist subjects sell themselves; they lead to a lot of trafficking, ”said Professor Zhang. “Official accounts and marketing accounts, they all come together and participate in this ‘market nationalism’.”
Chinese officials are careful not to let the anger get out of hand. According to tests conducted by China Digital Times, internet platforms have been diligently monitoring search results and comments related to Xinjiang and H&M since last week.
A Global Times article urged readers to “resolutely criticize those like H&M who make deliberate provocations, but at the same time stay rational and beware of so-called patriots who join the crowd in stirring up hatred.”
The Communist Youth League has been at the forefront of optimizing party messages for viral engagement. Its influence is growing as more voices in society look for ways to show their loyalty to Beijing, said Fang Kecheng, an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
“They have more and more fans,” said Professor Fang. “And whether it’s other government departments, marketing accounts, or these nationalist influencers, they’re all paying attention to their positions more closely and following immediately.
The H&M outcry has had the likely unintended effect of leading more Chinese internet users to discuss the situation in Xinjiang. For many years, people generally avoided the topic, knowing that comments that lingered on the harsh aspects of Chinese rule there could get them in trouble. To avoid detection by censors, many Internet users have referred to the region not by its Chinese name, but by using the Roman letters “xj”.
But in recent days, some have discovered first-hand why it is always worth being careful when talking about Xinjiang.
A beauty blogger told her to nearly 100,000 Weibo followers that she was contacted by a woman who said she was in Xinjiang. The anonymous woman said her father and other relatives had been locked up and foreign newspaper reports of the mass internments were all true.
Within hours, the blogger apologized for the “bad impact” of her post.
“Don’t just support Xinjiang cotton, support the people of Xinjiang too!” wrote another Weibo user. “Support the people of Xinjiang who walk the streets without having their phones and ID cards checked.”
The post then disappeared. Its author declined to comment, citing concerns for his safety. Weibo did not respond to a request for comment.
Lin Qiqing contributed to the research.
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