China - That's Bullying

This happens about 2 to 3 times a year, in China. It is always either the Koreans or Japanese. Sometimes its the Americans, now its Dolce & Gabbana. Every time something is not right or not nice happens to China, usually corporate wise, the said country's products will be boycotted. Sometimes it can happen via tourism where they vote with their feet. You get angry at MAS, you will stop coming to Malaysia. You did not do rescue operations well in Thailand, I will not go there.

Its like a belligerent child getting his/her way with the parents' approval.

China needs to understand and its citizens need to understand - people make mistakes, companies make mistakes ...how would you like it if a Chinese citizen in Hubei ranted off on FB racist comments about "pick any country". Does it make sense then to boycott all Chinese products? Come on, grow up.

Deal with each instance properly. Just because you are the world's biggest consumer group does not mean you use that as leverage every time you go crybaby. Be angry at the issue or the person, but not put the whole country's products at risk. One person's action is not representative of the whole company. One company's action is not representative of the entire country.

You behave as if China does NO WRONG. Just grow up if you want to be a citizen of the world. If you do not like the policies of ANOTHER COUNTRY, deal with it diplomatically. Not by asking your citizens to boycott that country. Just because you are the biggest kid in class does not give you the right to be a bully. Because you know very well the smaller countries cannot do likewise. If thats not bullying I don't know what is.

The thing is not all Chinese citizens feel the same way, some are more mature and may not feel the same way, but they will also feel the pressure to conform. Just ask the celebs who pulled out of the D&G contracts. Plus most foreign products in China are usually joint ventures and employ a lot of Chinese anyway, you end up hurting your own.

It is up to Beijing to to defuse and come up with a better plan to deal with such events and crises. Everyone looks to the parent. Teach them well to be better global citizens.

Ever wondered why there are so many untoward incidents by Chinese tourists overseas (refusing to leave plane; highly agitated protests by travel groups at airports; etc.).  Its the comfort that Beijing will look after them, its the Wolf Warrior 2 movies that preaches ultra patriotism and nationalism that the country will cover you in everything... and when the country practices "bullying" whenever things are not right or they feel slighted, everybody think its okay when they do it on their own accord.

The boycott policy can lead to a lot of negative behaviour. Everything need not end in a large scale protest. The age for China's wallet diplomacy is over, or rather should be over.


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The founders of the Italian fashion label Dolce & Gabbana have issued an apology to the Chinese people after a growing backlash over Stefano Gabbana’s "racist outburst". The fashion house has faced intense anger after an Instagram conversation in which Gabbana described China as a “country of s***” was leaked.

The brand had already faced widespread criticism for an advertising campaign, which featured a Chinese model struggling to eat Italian dishes like pizza and cannoli with chopsticks and prompted accusations that it was stereotyping the Chinese.

The resulting backlash has forced the fashion chain to cancel a show in Shanghai and retailers in mainland China and Hong Kong have stopped selling its products.

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Perhaps no other country felt the economic cost of China’s wrath as South Korea did in 2017.

By one estimate, China’s decision to boycott South Korea’s tourism industry over Seoul’s decision to install a US-made anti-missile system cost the economy some 7.5 trillion won ($6.8 billion), according to South Korea’s National Assembly’s Budget Office.

Since 2013, China has been the largest source of foreign tourists to South Korea, and made up around half of the 17 million people from overseas who visited the country in 2016. But since Seoul and Beijing’s falling out, the number of Chinese tourists visiting South Korea between March to October this year plunged more than 60%from the same period last year.

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The pattern was similar for the 2012 boycott of Japanese products. Kilian Heilmann, a researcher at the University of California, San Diego, found that Japanese car exports to China tumbled 32 per cent, or $1.9bn, in the 12 months after the boycott launched in September 2012 in response to Tokyo’s purchase of disputed islands known as the Diaoyu in China and Senkaku in Japan.