SUN WUKONG Time to outgrow boycott calls
By Wu Zhong, China Editor
HONG KONG - More and more angry Chinese are calling for a boycott of certain
foreign goods and services - part of a growing nationalistic movement prompted
by perceptions of humiliation due to the protests and demonstrations dogging
the Beijing Olympic torch relay. The sentiment has been exacerbated by what
many consider to be "distorted and biased" reports about Tibet by elements of
the Western media.
French products became the first target after French President Nicholas
Sarkozy's threat to boycott the opening of the Summer Games in August and the
fiasco of the Olympic torch relay during its Paris leg earlier this month.
Netizens have been disseminating messages on the Internet and
mobile phones calling for a boycott of French products such as Louis Vuitton
luxury items. They've also urged Chinese customers to stop shopping in
Carrefour, a French supermarket giant which runs about 100 outlets in 30
Chinese cities, on May 1.
Ahead of the "Labor Day" boycott, over the weekend in a dozen major Chinese
cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan and Hefei, thousands of Chinese,
mostly young students, marched in front of Carrefour outlets. "Carrefour, get
out of China", they shouted. In Beijing protesters also demonstrated in front
of the French Embassy.
Carrefour has been singled out because of a rumor claiming its largest
shareholder is financially supporting the exiled Tibetan government headed by
the Dalai Lama.
Asked for a comment on the issue at a press conference in Beijing on April 15,
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said, "Some Chinese people have expressed
their opinions. They have done this with a good reason, on which the French
side should conduct a good reflection [and] think it over."
Some Chinese media have reported a decrease in the number of shoppers in
Carrefour outlets in some cities. The Beijing Times reported that on April 15
the number of customers in several Carrefour outlets in the Chinese capital was
noticeably "reduced". On the same day, Wen Wei Po, a pro-Beijing daily in Hong
Kong, also said Carrefour outlets in Guangzhou were "much less busy" than
before. A salesperson told the press it was nice to have fewer customers as the
employees didn't need to work hard.
All this prompted Carrefour to issue a statement on its website proclaiming
that the Carrefour Group has always positively supported the Beijing Olympics.
The statement announced that the group president and chief executive officer of
China operations would both attend the opening ceremonies.
The statement continued, "The Carrefour group has never done and will not do
anything that hurts Chinese people's feelings." It added that rumors about
Carrefour's support of "illegal political organizations" are completely
ungrounded, and the company reserves its right to take legal action against any
organization or person who "viciously" fabricates and spread such rumors.
Amid increasingly growing nationalism, the few Chinese - such as CCTV anchor
Bai Yansong and China Youth Daily's photo editor He Yanguangwho - who were
brave enough to criticize the boycott as "irrational" and harmful to Chinese
interests, have been bombarded with accusations by angry bloggers.
Even US-educated Charles Zhang Chaoyang, chief executive officer of
Nasdaq-listed Sohu.com, supported the boycott of French products in order to
teach France a lesson. He wrote on Sohu.com, "I support boycotting French goods
to make the biased French media and public feel losses and pains ... Only when
large French enterprises suffer losses in Chinese market, will they exercise
their influence on French media and politicians ... to treat French people and
Chinese people equally."
He also advised Chinese women not stop coveting Louis Vuitton handbags: "[I]
hope people of our country give more support to Chinese brands to help Chinese
industries upgrade. In fact, most of foreign-brand products are made in China.
It is vanity that drives us to spend more in buying foreign brands."
Now campaigners are calling for a boycott on all consumer goods advertised on
US cable network CNN, after commentator Jack Cafferty called the Chinese "goons
and thugs" and products manufactured in China "junk" on "The Situation Room"
program on April 9. Later, however, Cafferty clarified that he was offering his
opinion of the Chinese government, not the Chinese people.
Chinese netizens are still angry about CNN carrying a doctored picture of the
March 14 riots in Tibet on its website. The original photo showed Tibetans
throwing stones at military vehicles, but when it first appeared on CNN's
website the Tibetans were gone and only the vehicles could be seen. CNN later
put up the original picture.
Soon after that, a website named "anticnn.com" appeared as a forum for
expressing anger at the news network; and these days the slogan "Don't behave
too much like CNN" has become popular among Chinese youths.
The communist government of China may be happy to see such anti-Western,
nationalistic and patriotic sentiments particularly among the younger
generations. Since the launch of economic reform and the opening up of China in
the late 1970s, Beijing has kept a close watch for the invasion of Western
ideas and values in the fear that the Middle Kingdom might become
"Westernized".
Efforts have been devoted to inundating young people and student with patriotic
ideas, with hundreds of so-called "patriotic education bases" set up on
"historical and revolutionary sites". In the end, however, the government's
patriotic campaign aimed at halting Western "peaceful evolution" has proven to
have little effect.
"This time, it is some Western media and politicians that have opened the
Chinese people's eyes to see what a double standard is. In this way,
ironically, they have done a big favor to the Chinese government, which now can
worry less about the nation being 'Westernized'," a sociology researcher in
Beijing told Asia Times Online.
But the Chinese government must be aware that nationalism can become a
double-edged sword. Taken to the extreme, nationalistic zeal can become
narrow-minded, or even fanatic, xenophobia. If pushed too far, such a mindset
could harm China's economic reform or even force the country to close its doors
once again.
This could explain why after the weekend's anti-France protests, the People's
Daily, the Communist Party's flagship newspaper, dispatched editorials on two
consecutive days praising the "patriotic enthusiasm", but appealing for calm.
The editorials urged people, particularly students, to devote their patriotic
enthusiasm to safeguarding social stability.
The current campaign to boycott foreign products is indeed irrational - and
reactionary to the trend of globalization in today's world. In fact, China, in
the past three decades, has benefited the most from globalization. And China
may not be able to sustain its high-speed economic growth if it goes against
globalization.
What if foreign countries called for a boycott to made-in-China products?
Confucius said, "Don't do onto others what you don't want others to do onto
you." The Chinese are angry because they don't want the Beijing Olympics to be
boycotted, so why are they calling for a boycott of foreign goods?
Boycotting foreign products would also hurt China's interests, because many
foreign goods are manufactured in the country. In the case of Carrefour, its
outlets in China employ Chinese workers, and sell goods mostly made in China.
Obviously, a successful boycott would harm to Chinese interests at the same
time it cut into Carrefour's profits.
In the modern history of China - since the turn of the 20th century - there
have been occasional campaigns to boycott foreign (particularly Japanese)
goods. The only "successful" boycott of foreign goods occurred under Mao Zedong
when China closed its doors and made almost no foreign products available to
the public.
Throughout history, calls to boycott foreign goods were made when China was a
weak country in terms of industrial production. Such calls sounded like angry
shouts by the weak.
But China is different today. The Chinese economy is one of the largest in the
world. By some estimates China's nominal gross domestic product will overtake
Japan's to become the second-largest in the world no later than 2010, or
sooner.
The best way to achieve a "successful" boycott would be for China to produce
its own top-quality goods and services and defeat foreign products in market
competition. Today, the campaign to boycott foreign products simply sounds out
of date.
And today there are far better - and more rational - ways for the Chinese
public to express discontent, anger or divergent views over the Olympic torch
relay and the Western press than by wrapping itself in nationalistic fervor.
In the end, one is forced to ask why an increasing powerful and advanced China
is still resorting to irrational and fruitless boycotts of foreign products?
Why?
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
