Fraying at the seams 接縫處磨損
China boycotts Western clothes brands over Xinjiang cotton 中國因新疆棉抵制西方服飾品牌
Retailers may be caught between nationalistic Chinese consumers and conscientious ones at home
在愛國的中國消費者及祖國具道德良知的顧客間，零售商可能左右為難
Mar 27th 2021
NEW YORK
FOR MORE than a year some big foreign apparel and technology companies have been walking a fine line on the human-rights abuses committed by China against Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim ethnic minoritiy in the north-western region of Xinjiang. These firms have been working to clear their supply chains of the forced labour of Uyghurs, hundreds of thousands of whom pick cotton under apparently coercive conditions. What they have not done is boast about these efforts, fearful of angering the Communist Party and 1.4bn Chinese consumers. “Usually in our work it’s easier to get companies to say they’re doing the right thing than to actually do it,” says Scott Nova of the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), a labour-monitoring organisation, and the Coalition to End Forced Labour in the Uyghur Region. “On this issue, with limited exceptions, the opposite is true.”
一年多以來，一些大型外國成衣和科技公司謹慎對待中國對維吾爾族--新疆西北地區的少數民族，大部分為穆斯林--的人權侵犯。這些公司設法確定供應鏈未使用被強迫的維吾爾族勞動力，數十萬族人顯然在被脅迫情況下採摘棉花。他們並未宣揚這些努力，擔心激怒共產黨和14億中國消費者。「通常在工作上，我們比較容易碰到公司說自己在做正確的事，實際上卻沒有做。」勞工監督組織工人權利聯盟（WRC）及中止維吾爾區域強迫勞動聯盟的諾瓦說， 「在這個議題上，情況恰好相反，只有少數例外。」
An online furore stoked by Chinese authorities this week suggests that Beijing may be tiring of this double game. China’s government, increasingly keen to punish critics of their Xinjiang policies, is forcing foreign companies to make a choice they have been studiously trying to avoid: support China or get out of the Chinese market.
中國政府本周在網路掀起騷動，顯示北京可能厭倦了雙面遊戲。中國政府愈來愈激烈地懲罰新疆政策的批評者，迫使外國公司做出他們一直在努力避免的選擇：支持中國或滾出中國市場。
Chinese authorities have stirred nationalist protests against foreign companies in the past, then tamped them down having made their point. This time the campaign looks like part of a broader, more enduring counterattack against critics of the government’s policies in Xinjiang, where it incarcerated more than 1m Uyghurs in a gulag for their religious and cultural beliefs. It extends beyond the corporate world. In recent days China has imposed sanctions against members of the British, Canadian and European parliaments, European scholars and think-tanks in Britain and Germany. Britain, Canada and the EU had previously joined America in sanctions on senior officials in Xinjiang, implicated in what the American government has called “crimes against humanity” and “genocide”. “China is not the first to shoot, neither will we be passive and submissive to threats from the outside,” said Yang Xiaoguang, chargé d’affaires at the Chinese embassy in London, at a news conference. “The Chinese people will not be bullied.”
中國政府過去曾煽動民族主義者抵制外國公司，表明立場後再平息抗議怒潮。這次行動似乎更廣泛、持久地反擊對新疆政策的批評者，新疆超過100萬維吾爾族，因宗教和文化信仰關押在勞改營，這已超越商界範圍。近日，中國對英、加和歐洲議會議員、歐洲學者以及英國和德國的智庫實施制裁。英、加和歐盟之前曾加入美國，一起對新疆的高級官員實施制裁，這牽涉到美國政府所謂的「危害人類罪」和「種族滅絕」。中國駐倫敦大使館代辦楊曉光在新聞發布會上說：「中國不是第一個開槍的人，我們對外來威脅也不會挨打屈服而不反擊。中國人民不是好欺侮的。」
Instead, it is Chinese authorities who are doing the bullying. On March 24th the Communist Youth League, a party affiliate, whipped up a nationalist online boycott of H&M, digging up a months-old statement on the Swedish garment-maker’s corporate website expressing concerns about reports of forced labour in Xinjiang. Government officials and state media joined in. An online mob besieged H&M and other brands, including Nike, Uniqlo and Adidas, demanding they retract past statements about Xinjiang if they expect to make money in China.
相反地，正在霸凌別人的是中國當局。 3月24日，共產黨附屬組織的中國共青團煽動愛國者在網路抵制H＆M，在這家瑞典服裝製造商的官網上挖出一個月前的聲明，該聲明表達對新疆強迫勞動報導的擔憂。政府官員和官媒也加入，網路暴民圍攻H＆M和其他品牌，包括Nike，優衣庫和愛迪達，要求他們撤回有關新疆的聲明，如果他們想在中國賺錢的話。
By March 26th Chinese apps, from e-commerce to maps, had booted H&M off their platforms. By the next day at least some of its stores in China had been closed. A Chinese business worth $1bn in revenues—about 5% of H&M’s global sales in 2020—is in jeopardy. Multiple Chinese celebrities publicly renounced brands they had endorsed but which have stuck by earlier statements about Xinjiang (or not indicated any change). These include H&M, as well as Adidas, Nike, Puma and Uniqlo. Zhou Dongyu, an actress, dropped her deal with Burberry because she said the British maker of posh trench-coats, a member of the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), a due-diligence consortium, had not “clearly and publicly stated its stance on cotton from Xinjiang”, according to her agency. Tencent, a tech giant, pulled Burberry-designed outfits from one of its online games.
到了3月26日，中國應用程式從電商平台到地圖都把H＆M踢出平台。次日一些中國的H＆M門市已經關閉，營業額高達10億美元的中國市場，約占H＆M 2020年全球銷售額的5％，正岌岌可危。許多中國名人公開譴責他們代言的品牌，但代言活動在品牌先前發表新疆聲明後仍繼續進行（或未表態要改變），包括H＆M、愛迪達及Nike、 Puma和優衣庫。女演員周冬雨放棄與Burberry的合約。因為她透過經紀公司表示，這家英國高檔風衣製造商、良好棉花發展協會的成員（BCI，一家盡職的聯營企業），並未「明確並公開地表示對新疆棉的立場」。科技巨頭騰訊將Burberry設計的服裝從一款線上遊戲撤下。
The antagonism toward foreign companies comes amid talk in both China and the West of “economic decoupling” between the two blocs, which have been intricately knitted together over decades of globalisation. These debates have focused in part on critical technology such as computer chips and artificial intelligence. But China’s new five-year plan articulates a more ambitious concept of self-sufficiency, the better to shield China from an uncertain or hostile external environment. The Communist Party views itself as increasingly able to exert economic pressure on others, using the “powerful gravitational field” of the world’s second-largest economy.
對外商敵意興起的同時，中國與西方都在談論雙方「經濟脫鉤」。在數十年來全球化的運動下，雙方經濟已錯綜複雜地交織在一起。這些討論部分聚焦在關鍵科技上，如電腦晶片和人工智慧。 但中國的十四五計畫表明，企圖心更強的自給自足概念，更能保護中國抵禦混沌不明或充滿敵意的外部環境。共產黨認為自己愈來愈能利用世界第二大經濟體的「強大引力場」，對他人施加經濟壓力。
The gravitational pull is strong indeed. Several apparel firms, including Muji, Fila China and the Chinese operation of Hugo Boss, gave testimonials on Chinese social media that they support Xinjiang cotton; a spokeswoman for Hugo Boss told Bloomberg that the Chinese post was unauthorised and has since been deleted (all three of those companies have also issued statements from corporate headquarters acknowledging concerns about allegations of forced labour in Xinjiang).
這個引力場拉力確實很強。許多服裝品牌包括無印良品，斐樂中國和雨果博在中國代理商等，在社群網站上提供支持新疆棉的證明。雨果博的一位女性發言人告訴彭博，這份中文發言未經授權，因此已被刪除（所有這三家公司都已在總部發表聲明，承認對新疆強迫勞動的醜聞有所擔憂）。
Other firms have apparently taken down earlier statements about Xinjiang. They include PVH, which owns Calvin Klein, and Inditex, which owns Zara, among other brands. Inditex had 570 stores in mainland China as of January 2020, more than in any other country besides its Spanish home market, and its manufacturers in China employed more than 500,000 workers, second only to Bangladesh. PVH and Inditex belong—like H&M, Nike and Burberry—to the BCI, which announced in October that it would stop operating in Xinjiang. (That announcement disappeared from the organisation’s website on March 25th; a representative of the BCI said its policy had not changed, that its website has been the target of repeated distributed denial-of-service attacks in recent days, and that it would repost “relevant information” when it could.) PVH and Inditex did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
其他公司顯然已撤下先前有關新疆的聲明，包括擁有凱文克萊的PVH以及擁有Zara等品牌的印地紡。印地紡至2020年1月為止，在中國大陸擁有570家門市，比西班牙本土市場以外的任何國家都還要多，而其中國工廠雇用50多萬名勞工，僅次於孟加拉。 PVH和印地紡與H＆M、Nike和Burberry一樣，都是良好棉花發展協會的成員，這個協會在（2020年）10月公告將在新疆停止營運，而這份公告在（今年）3月25日從協會官網上消失； 良好棉花發展協會的代表人表示政策並未改變，最近幾天網站成為分散式阻斷服務攻擊（殭屍攻擊）的目標，將重新發布「相關信息」。PVH和印地紡都沒有立即回應。
Western brands that have held their ground on Xinjiang may worry that being seen as kowtowing to the Communist Party could provoke a backlash among shoppers in the West, who increasingly expect companies to behave responsibly on everything from the treatment of workers to climate change. And there are many people inside these companies “who recognise the moral gravity of what’s happening in Xinjiang”, says Mr Nova of the WRC. The firms may also be calculating that the nationalist fervour in China will cool. And they are hedging their bets. None of the companies named has publicly endorsed a call to action pushed by the Coalition to End Forced Labour in the Uyghur Region.
對新疆議題維持立場不變的西方品牌，也許擔心自己被視為對中共磕頭，可能激起西方購物者的強烈反彈，消費者愈來愈希望企業對一切行為負責任，從對待勞工到氣候變遷。 良好棉花發展協會的諾瓦說，這些公司內部有很多員工「認知到新疆發生的事情具有道德上的嚴重性」。企業們可能也盤算，中國的愛國熱潮終會冷卻，他們在為自己留後路。目前上述公司沒有一家公開支持由中止維吾爾區域強迫勞動聯盟發起的行動呼籲。
Investors seem to think it’s a wash, at least for the time being. The share prices of H&M, Nike and Fast Retailing, which owns Uniqlo, all fell on news of the boycotts but have since recovered much of those losses. Those of firms that took a more accommodating stance, such as Fila and Hugo Boss, have reacted in a similar way. The big winners are Chinese firms that make using Xinjiang cotton a point of pride, such as Anta, a big sportswear-maker listed in Hong Kong (in part thanks to interest from patriotic retail investors).
投資人似乎認為這只是正負相抵（wash:利弊參半互相抵銷），至少目前是如此。 H＆M、Nike和優衣庫母公司迅銷的股價皆因遭到抵制的消息而下跌，但之後已收回大部分跌幅。 Fila和雨果博等採取更圓融立場的公司股價反應也類似。最大的贏家是以使用新疆棉為傲的中國企業，例如在香港上市的大型運動服飾製造商安踏（部分要感謝愛國零售投資者的興趣）。
That could all change as both China’s official anger at criticisms of its Xinjiang policies and pressure from Western human-rights campaigners and consumers continue to intensify. Human-rights campaigners are already calling for a corporate boycott of next year’s winter Olympics in Beijing. “Companies feel caught,” says Mr Nova. They know that responding to Chinese pressure by renouncing their own human-rights commitments looks indefensible in their home markets. At the same time, they are understandably worried about the consequences in China. The choice between the lucrative Chinese market and the values firms profess in the rest of the world is becoming unavoidable, says Bennett Freeman, a former State Department official in the Clinton administration who now advises multinationals (and also volunteers at the Coalition to End Forced Labour in the Uyghur Region).
隨著中國官方對新疆政策遭受的批評怒火持續升高，西方人權運動者和消費者施加的壓力也愈演愈烈，這一切都可能改變。人權運動者已呼籲企業聯合抵制明年的北京冬奧。 「公司感覺被綁架了」諾瓦先生說。他們知道，透過放棄自己的人權承諾來應對中國的壓力，在他們的本土市場似乎是站不住腳。同時，他們擔憂在中國的下場也可以理解。一邊是利潤豐厚的中國市場，一邊是在世界其他地區宣揚的價值觀，企業將無可避免在兩者之間做選擇。科林頓政府前國務院官員弗里曼說，現為跨國公司顧問（同時也是中止維吾爾區域強迫勞動聯盟的志工）。
For Western companies in China both paths, the principled and the pliant, carry risks. But so does the Communist Party’s nationalist indignation. If it does end up causing foreign firms to leave the Chinese market and reduce their dependence on Chinese supply chains, that could itself irritate many Chinese shoppers and hurt millions of Chinese workers. It would also give Western businesses more freedom to do something the party would itself love to avoid: criticise China in the open.
對在中國的西方公司而言，不論是堅守原則，或順從中國，兩條路都有風險。但是共產黨的愛國主義者憤慨也是如此。如果最終導致外國公司退出中國市場，並減少對中國供應鏈的依賴，這可能會激怒許多中國購物者，並傷害數百萬中國勞工。這也將給予西方企業有更大的自由，去做共產黨本身想要避免的事：公開地批評中國。
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