A great video from Alexander Mercouris, spot on as always, '
Don't do unto
others what you don't want done unto
you.' the west had been using sanction as a weapon, now China is hitting back and the west is surprise and is complaining....LOL.
2.7K views
China Boycotts Nike, H&M: West Baffled & Shocked
By
Alexander Mercouris - 02 April 2021
Some people in the West are shocked, upset, dismayed, and astonished once the Chinese do to them what they themselves have been doing to so many people for so long!
It's fine for the West apparently to impose sanctions, restrictions, systems of economic coercion against businesses which trade with countries which take stances with which the West is unhappy and uncomfortable.
But it is shocking, it's astonishing, when the Chinese do the same, nonetheless that's indeed what's happening and what makes this particularly offensive and horrifying from a Western point of view is that it's actually going to have an effect that the West knows. This is something that is confirmed once again by that Financial Times article.
The outlook is clear, it goes on to say China runs its economy as it wishes, and it will not tolerate attention being drawn to human rights infringements. It is forcing brands into choosing between social responsibility and sales to one of the world's biggest consumer market.
The silent treatment it has given to H&M is only the start of that test. It's horrifying what the Chinese are doing. We would never do such a thing, even though of course we do. It's fine for us to bully a small company that sends a small business that sells Cuban coffee. But it's horrifying, it's completely shocking when the Chinese do it to a big company like H&M.
Moreover,
because of the size of the Chinese market, because of the commercial imperative of selling to that market, there is the even greater horror and fear that maybe, maybe H&M will actually bend to what China wishes. Maybe companies like H&M and Nike rather than lose forever their position in the Chinese market and be massively diminished in consequence facing economic competition, commercial competition from companies that still trade with China, that they cannot themselves match, maybe those companies will bend to what Beijing wants and will do as Beijing wishes.
This, of course, underlines the key point about this affair.
The United States especially, but the West collectively, in addition has been able to engage in this kind of economic pressure on companies and businesses for a very long time without having to fear any significant consequences, and in the certain knowledge that companies will always bend to its will because its own market has been far and away the biggest.
No company trading around the world until now was prepared to risk exclusion from the market of the United States. Now what the United States and Europe is encountering for the first time is that this same economic pressure is coming from a country, namely China, whose consumer market is comparable in scale and size to that of the United States, and which is growing even faster.
The economic boot is now on the other foot and the West doesn't like it at all!
And as we see from that Financial Times article, they don't really know in the West what to do about it. To repeat the very last sentence of this Financial Times article,
the silent treatment China has given to H&M is only the start of that test. There is no clear explanation or follow-up to that sentence, there's no way of explaining what companies like H&M and Nike should do in this kind of situation.
Should they sacrifice their commercial future and possibly their long-term existence by doing what the West wants or should they persist in trading in China, buying in this case Xinjiang cotton, and do in the consequence defying and enraging those people in the West, who feel that buying Xinjiang cotton is wrong and should stop.
So, once more we see the demonstration, the reality that the West finds itself in a situation where it is not accustomed to. Up to now, for more than 70 years since the end of the second World War, it has felt itself able to strike these moralistic poses, in the knowledge that no one would be able to do to the West what the West is doing to other countries.
Now with the rising shot of China, that has changed, and
the West for the first time is getting a dose of its own medicine. It has no real response to this. It does not know what to do, and it is floundering.
I'm afraid, just as I said in my previous program where I discussed the sanctions that China has imposed on activists in the West.
The West will need to get used to the fact, the world where the US and the West imposed its ideas and values upon others and found that those others had no way to retaliate or respond or act in kind has now passed.
We are in a different world from now and this lesson needs to be learned fully and quickly in Western capitals. We will see if it will be. Thank you for joining me for this program...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
China forces brands to make a cotton choice
Action against H&M and Nike shows intolerance of scrutiny over Xinjiang
Boycott West’s guilt presumption of China: Global Times editorial
well with the lockdown and the Pandemic. It gave me a reason not to buy their products.