China Cancels H&M | Hacker News Reader

China Cancels H&M

jingdaily.com

47 pointsptr41 comments

"Cancelled in China" is the new "Banned in Boston"

A badge of honor, if you ask me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banned_in_Boston

This makes me want to shop at H&M. The article makes no mention of the cultural erasure, concentration camps, forced re-education in Xinjiang and therefore comes off as propaganda.

Yup, the lines are starting to be drawn.

The NBA and player's relatively recent encroachment into the CCP's no-go zone was interesting to watch unfold - and clear that money and not ethics or values are driving the people in charge of many organizations.

Edit to add: the first organizations and people to take a stand against abuse are not cowards.

Cold War II will hopefully be more of a culture war than a hot war.

That’s not up to the west though, it’s up to whether the CCP invades Taiwan.

It's already well underway. In my opinion, a combination of tech and the entertainment industry has transformed the populations of many Western countries into atomised, ineffectual and under-developed veal calves.

Cold War 2.0 multicultural rap music piped in public places is sick, awful.

We are already there. Current day communist China has very little to offer in terms of universally appealing culture but they are happy to ride deconstructionist woke to nullify western culture(s)

Interesting indeed - as I heard someone point out recently: the Chinese government takes immediate offense at anything perceived as negative said about it, but has no qualms criticizing other nations.

Double standards.

It’s not just double standards, it’s a deliberate strategy to use the western culture of woke-ism against us in the culture/ideology wars.

Note the fake fight now over the term “wolf-warrior diplomacy”, which was a term derived from a Chinese movie, promoted by CCP nationalists, and is now “racist”.

https://twitter.com/kevincarrico/status/1375242361526173697?...

> However, in the past, companies like H&M (and Primark, Nike, and others) have, for decades, routinely been name-checked as some of the worst offenders when it comes to worker rights abuses. The Clean Clothes Campaign found that, during the pandemic, many fashion names like H&M continued to violate working contacts by failing to pay wages.

H&M doesn't have a great track record when it comes to paying workers [0], so I don't think this article should convince anyone that H&M is a brand to be buying from.

[0] https://cleanclothes.org/news/2020/global-campaign-confronts...

It’s the first large brand I’ve heard standing up to the abuses of the CCP like this though. Not gonna shop there forever, but I want to show support for this rare and commendable action.

If you have some other large brands that are similarly taking a big financial hit to stand up to what’s going on in Xinjiang, I’ll patronize them instead.

They didn't do it voluntarily. If they used China cotton, they would be the target of western campaigners and boycotts. If they don't, they get the same in China.

They were in a lose lose situation. They lost.

Could they have done better? I think so. They could have made a claim that all items would be labelled so consumers could choose. Or they could have said nothing sold in Europe/the west contained Chinese cotton.

But that compromise might have just gotten them boycotted in both places.

I gotta say that if I walk into a store and see shelves labeled "with slave labor" and "slave labor free", I'm walking out the door without either.

I know that the negative consequences of many of my actions are hidden from me, including some that I'm semi-consciously ignoring. But when something credibly rises to my attention, I will at least try to let my conscience take precedence over pricing.

People see "free range chickens" and "caged chickens" in the same shop and don't seem to care...

Nice website but it looks like a collection of articles

Is there a list anywhere listing clothing manufactures with a good track record?

Everyone's got brands they like, but if 1 brand is better than another in the same category (say Express vs Gap) might sway my shopping choices...

I am a proponent of Certified B Corporations [0]. You can look up their directory to see the companies certified for a particular industry [1]. From their main page:

"Certified B Corporations are a new kind of business that balances purpose and profit. They are legally required to consider the impact of their decisions on their workers, customers, suppliers, community, and the environment. This is a community of leaders, driving a global movement of people using business as a force for good."

Take a look!

[0] https://bcorporation.net/ [1] https://bcorporation.net/directory

Sure, arguably re-education camps are worse than factories where young teenagers fingers are bleeding to make you a $4 shirt that won't last a year.. but it doesn't justify supporting the latter.

So what did H&M actually do to deserve this?

The article goes to great length to avoid the issue at hand. At the same time it brings up unrelated issues H&M and Nike (??) and others supposedly have.

This: "Since 2020, it has banned cotton from the Xinjiang region citing human rights concerns."

The definition of what "human rights" isis being played by all sides in the grand disinformation game.

According to many American activists, human rights in America are also violated for many groups of the society, so, should foreign companies stop using American products, too? Business and politics should stay separated, I believe, which I find specially true for public companies, which have fiduciary duties to their shareholders.

> According to many American activists, human rights in America are also violated for many groups of the society, so, should foreign companies stop using American products, too?

I imagine some of those activists would say yes, since they want to pressure those companies to do better.

That seems like a suspiciously convenient way to absolve everybody of conscience. It's not the business' responsibility, nor the shareholders, nor the customers, nor the politicians. Everybody agrees that it's bad but each expects somebody else to do something about it.

EU decided to sanction China for XJ. First sanctions since TianAnMen. H&M letter was released last year, so timing suggest H&M targeted (by Communist Youth League) in retaliation. A little nationalism organically spread drama to Nike and other brands. As for whys, CCP position has always been foreign companies don't have right / "deserve" market access if they decide to politicized commerce. But more significantly, CCP is adopting more assertive diplomacy. Wolf warrior or whatever lazy western labelling. West thinks it's for domestic audiences. I think it's China finally asserting need for diplomatic "respect", not in terms of admiration but regard, i.e. raise costs for sanctioning China should be as high as sanctioning US, who is more or less immune.

Western corporations should be fleeing China like rats from a ship at this point.

https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/10/06/unfavorable-vi...

China has a branding problem. Instead of garnering support, building rapport through collaboration and mutual growth, their PR strategy is immature and misplaced at best, damaging and crippling at worst. Lashing out, isolationism, asymmetric trade, human rights issues and generally going against democracy is putting them at odds with everyone else.

China could have played this so much better.

China has a branding problem.

A network of concentration camps, forced labour and forced sterilization is more than a branding problem [1]

Given the scale of abuse, you could argue that it is branding success.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/04/muslim-minorit...

Exactly. The fact that given the level of evil China is carrying out and has been for decades, the fact that the rest of the world hasn't decided to wipe out the CCP, or at the very least fully embargo China can only be seen as a massive branding success. All those Confucius Institutions embedded in the US university system are doing wonders for China.

Hmm... if a company blackmails people into submission, exploiting their economic dependence - we wouldn't call that positive PR. Branding success is "I love this company." and investing in long term goodwill of the brand. This is directly supported by the GP's link to the Pew research polls that show how they're squandering their reputation around the world.

What you are describing is Economic Coercion: https://www.csis.org/analysis/time-collective-pushback-again...

Hopefully businesses will start to learn that investing in China leaves you at the whim of the CCP.

We should cancel all of China.

All the crap happening in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Tibet... Sesame credit, Falun gong murders, forced organ harvests, Great firewall, censorship, forced labor, child labor, Tiananmen square massacre, and we could be listing things all day.

The Xinjiang situation should be more than enough on its own.

I wouldn't call a coordinated policy action "canceling".

its their loss if they don't want to wear h&m.. what will life look like if you consume china-only brands?

This could happen to Apple If they took a stand.

Apple employees and their stance is to support diversity and inclusion, fully embracing it but turn a blind eye when they need to also talk about Xianjin and human rights abuses.

Just shows that it’s all a dog and pony show.

It's performative virtue signaling and I wish Cook et al would stop. I wish all of corporate virtue signaling would stop actually.

Corps are amoral and we should stop pretending otherwise and if the US wants corps to behave different, then we need to regulate them.

But if corporations are amoral, why shouldn't they pretend otherwise? It is to their benefit, and they are obliged to make decisions to their benefit regardless of moral considerations.

If a company's job postings said "We are an amoral corporation and we don't pretend otherwise", would that help their hiring?

I agree that we should take a skeptical view to corporations virtue signalling. But I also think even democratic governments have at best a marginally stronger claim to moral virtue. That combined with the challenges of crafting regulations that achieve the desired results (desired by who though?), with acceptable levels of negative expected and unexpected consequences (acceptable by who?). Good regulation is important, but it is fiendishly difficult to do well.

China will lose this war. They are the producers and we are the clients. You know who wins in a battle between producers and clients?

Generally speaking, who wins are single suppliers, at least until alternatives are found.

If you had to buy air to breathe, and it came from a single supplier, that supplier would have you by the lungs, which is like by the balls, only worse.

Soviet scifi was there in 1929![1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Air_Seller

Reply on news.ycombinator.com