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Several nights ago at Capitol One Arena in D.C., the Wizards played the Guangzhou Long Lions at basketball. Fearing offending the Chinese government, NBA security agents confiscated signs reading “Free Hong Kong” and “Google Uyghurs.”
The NBA, ESPN, Nike, Paramount, MGM, Apple, VANs, and “South Park” are not the only ones kowtowing to China’s growing aggression, writes Madeline Osburn at The Federalist.
Companies Bend Over Backwards to Appease Chinese
It began with an apology from brands like Gap and Coach in 2018, who made T-shirt designs with a map of China without Taiwan, but after the protests in Hong Kong broke out, users online and Chinese state media began a witch hunt. They demanded apologies from every luxury clothing brand that made “erroneous representations” of China on their website shipping options or their region or language menu options. Listing Taiwan or Hong Kong as separate countries from China is an immediate offense.
A host of hotel chains and airlines were also threatened by Chinese authorities to not list Taiwan as a country on their websites. Here are the brands that made changes or apologized for violating the “One-China” principle or damaging China’s “territorial integrity.”
- ASICS
- Gap
- Zara
- Calvin Klein
- Versace
- Givenchy
- Fresh
- Valentino
- Swarovski
- Samsung
- Ray-Ban
- Qantas
- Air France
- Air Canada
- British Airways
- Malaysia Airlines
- Japan Airlines
- American Airlines
- Marriott
- Medtronic
- Global Blue
(Versace apologized for a shirt listing Hong Kong and Macau as independent countries. Global Blue fired staff for calling Taiwan a country.)
Read more here.
