Xi’s Red Line on China Human Rights Makes Companies Pick Sides
- Western brands face backlash over comments on forced labor
- China taking ‘more confident approach’: cabinet adviser
China has pushed a campaign to boycott Western retailers such as H&M, Nike and others.
Photographer: SOPA Images/Getty Images
For years China has sought to draw moral equivalence with the West over human rights, insisting that other countries have no standing to criticize its policies. Now Beijing is making companies pay if they disagree.
China this week has pushed a campaign to boycott Western retailers after the U.S., U.K., Canada and the European Union imposed sanctions over human-rights abuses against ethnic minority Uyghurs in Xinjiang. The furor started when the Communist Youth League amplified a months-old statement from Sweden’s Hennes & Mauritz AB expressing concern about reports of forced labor in the far west region, and quickly spread to other companies.