Thread by @WholePicture_

#Thread about #NIKE #adidas #China #Uiguri #transparency #geopolitics :

Companies such as H&M, Adidas and Nike no longer want to process cotton from Xinjiang because of forced labor allegations. Therefore, the Chinese media are now calling for a boycott of the brands.

According to estimates by the United Nations and human rights organizations, China is holding up to one million Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

Source:
nzz.ch/wirtschaft/hm-…

According to studies by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the regime uses Uighur slave labor on a large scale in cotton production. China's government vehemently denies the allegations. Around 20% of the cotton produced worldwide comes from Xinjiang.

The share prices of Western companies fell significantly

The big fashion and textile companies have made enormous efforts in recent months to ban cotton harvested in Xinjiang from their supply chains.

However, due to the multi-stage production process and the blending of different types of cotton, which is common in the industry, this is very complex. Big labels like H&M or Adidas only buy cotton that has been certified by the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI).

The organization, which is domiciled in Switzerland and to which numerous Western companies belong, stopped the certification of cotton from Xinjiang last year. BCI announced that an independent test was no longer possible.

China is an important sales market
Adidas, for example, has 19% of the clothing it sells worldwide produced in China. But China is even more important for companies as a sales market. For H&M, the country is the fourth largest market in the world.

For companies from the West, the political conflict between China on the one hand and Europe and the USA on the other is a dilemma: In the West, consumers expect sustainably produced goods.

At the same time, the huge Chinese market is becoming more and more important for the corporations. “The politicization of business is getting more and more companies into a quandary”.

In Europe one expects transparency from companies and compliance with social and sustainability standards. In China, on the other hand, there is a risk of being punished for precisely that.

For example, those who pay attention to clean supply chains risk being reproached by the Chinese authorities for being “against China”.

There have been repeated campaigns against Western companies like this one in China in the past. After the German Chancellor Angela Merkel received the Dalai Lama in the Federal Chancellery in 2007, Daimler was not allowed to export S-Class vehicles to China for a few months.

China's authorities usually use such campaigns in a targeted manner in political conflicts; they are seldom spontaneous outbursts of outrage from the Chinese public.

In most cases, the waves ebb after a few days. And that's how it should be now - after all, the young Chinese love the products of Western branded goods.