Hindustan Times :
China’s top ride-hailing app dropped Swedish fashion retailer H&M from its listings as Chinese celebrities stopped endorsing foreign labels in a growing uproar over Western accusations of forced labour in Xinjiang.
H&M faced a public backlash in China when social media users in the country circulated a statement the company made last year announcing it would no longer source cotton from Xinjiang after reports of the use of forced labour by Uighur Muslims.
Western governments and rights groups have accused authorities in the far-western region of detaining and torturing Uighurs in camps, where some former inmates have said they were subject to ideological indoctrination.
Beijing denies the accusations and describes the camps in question as vocational training centres which help combat religious extremism.
Search results for H&M in the Didi Chuxing ride-hailing app for all of China’s major cities yielded no results on Friday. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The backlash against H&M caused Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, shopping app Meituan and the maps app for search engine Baidu Inc to each remove the Swedish retailer from their listings.
Other overseas brands, including Burberry Group PLC, Nike Inc, and Adidas AG have also faced an online blowback for making similar statements regarding their sourcing of cotton in Xinjiang.
