By Eduardo Baptista and Casey Hall
BEIJING (Reuters) – Uniqlo has faced a storm of online criticism in China after a BBC report quoted its owner’s chief executive as saying the company does not source cotton from the remote western Xinjiang region.
The British Broadcasting Corporation published an interview on Thursday with Tadashi Yanai, the chief executive of Fast Retailing, in which he asked whether the Japanese retailer had taken cotton from the region.
The report surfaced on China’s social media platform Weibo on Friday, with several users criticizing the company and some saying they would stop buying its products.
“With this kind of attitude from Uniqlo, and their proud founder, they might be betting that foreign customers will forget about it in a few days and keep shopping,” one user wrote. “So can we stand strong this time?”
In the interview, Yanai first answered the BBC’s question by saying, “We are not using it,” before pausing to say that he did not want to continue with his answer as “it was political”.
Fast Retailing did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The move from Xinjiang, where rights groups and the US government accuse China of abuses against the Uyghur population, has been a political hotbed for foreign firms with a large presence in China.
Beijing denies any abuse in the region, the source of most of China’s cotton.
In 2021, Uniqlo’s competitor, H&M, faced a consumer strike in China after a statement on its website expressed concern over alleged forced labor in Xinjiang and said it would no longer import cotton from there.
H&M has seen its stores removed from major e-commerce platforms and its store locations moved from map applications in China as it bore the brunt of consumer anger at companies that refused to source cotton from Xinjiang.
Other Western brands such as Nike, Puma, Burberry, Adidas and others have also been caught up in the controversy.
In September, China’s commerce ministry launched an investigation into PVH, the parent company of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger.
In a statement, PVH was suspected of “wrongly denying” Xinjiang cotton and other products “without certainty”.
PVH said it will respond according to the relevant laws, the media reported.
In 2020, Fast Retailing said it did not produce any products in Xinjiang. However, Yanai has refused in recent years to discuss the issue in some media interviews, saying that Uniqlo wanted to remain neutral.