© Provided by Washington Examiner China is the bad guy. Whoever stands up to China's misdeeds is the good guy. Those good guys will suffer for their stances, and so, all people of goodwill ought to support them.
Clothier H&M and shoemakers Nike, New Balance, and Adidas have earned the ire of China's Communist government. They did so by criticizing the regime's abuse of Uyghurs and announcing that the companies would no longer get their cotton from Xinjiang, where Uyghur workers are forced to labor in slave-like conditions.
H&M, based in Sweden, months ago announced that it wouldn't participate in the evil economy of Xinjiang cotton. Just last week, though, the Communist Youth League dragged up H&M's criticism and stoked outrage among the regime's defenders.
China has retaliated by calling for a national boycott of H&M and other brands that criticized the country in rejecting Xinjiang cotton: Nike, Adidas, New Balance, Uniqlo, and more.
Chinese internet censors erased H&M. If you entered "H&M" or even "HM" on a search engine, a maps app, or a social media site in China, you got no results.
Nike and H&M saw their stock fall, which isn't surprising. Whatever goodwill from Westerners the company had attained by swearing off slave labor, there will inevitably be a huge cost for standing up to China. China has a population of 1.4 billion people, with most rising into the middle class. It's an immense market - more than twice the size of the Group of Seven or the European Union markets (and much younger).
This is why so many companies have been willing, for so long, to stay silent about China's horrific human rights abuses. Remember when the NBA was standing up against oppression in the United States while refusing to allow a defense of Hong Kong during its struggle against Beijing's oppression? Notice how Disney and so many other companies genuflect to Beijing? It's because the communist government tolerates no criticism and exercises strict control over its command economy.
That means Nike, Adidas, New Balance, and H&M all knew that there was likely a huge cost to their statements of truth and their disentangling from Xinjiang. For this reason, everyone should praise and reward these companies.
Nike, of course, is not our favorite company. They lobbied for U.S. emissions regulations that would burden smaller competitors who actually make stuff in the U.S. while making their own stuff in far dirtier China. They gave Colin Kaepernick a veto over U.S. flags on sneakers.
Yet, here, they did the right thing. And conservatives need to be unafraid to applaud and reward corporations that do the right thing.
Some conservatives will be tempted to dwell solely on corporate wokeness and so write off these corporations. But just as Nike deserves criticism for doing the wrong thing, it deserves praise for doing the right thing.
Other conservatives or libertarians are inclined to wave away the whole idea of corporations standing up for what's right. They instinctually reject "corporate social responsibility" and maintain that a corporation's only responsibility is to maximize profits.
We agree that corporations pursuing profits typically improves the welfare of society - we wouldn't have the baker's bread, as Adam Smith reminds us, if he wasn't trying to make money. But we have long maintained that a market needs moral guardrails. China's treatment of the Uyghurs is out of bounds. Participating in Xinjiang's cotton economy is direct cooperation in evil.
Kudos to H&M, Adidas, New Balance, and Nike for refusing, at significant cost, to take part in evil.
Tags: Opinion, Editorials, Uyghurs, Adidas, China, Boycotts, Fashion, Human Rights, Slavery, Business, Foreign Policy
Original Author: Washington Examiner
Original Location: Business standing up to China