Today thousands of protesters rallied across China in front of French supermarket chain Carrefour, denouncing Carrefour as well as news outlet CNN. CNN correspondant Jack Cafferty recently referred to the Chinese as "goons and thugs."
Conflict surrounding the summer Olympics in Beijing, China continues to build. A month ago the international community saw worldwide outcry as the Olympic torch circled the globe.
As the torch passed through Paris on April 7th, protests turned especially violent. When an activist jostled a wheelchair-bound Chinese athlete in an attempt to disrupt the procession. The chaos was videotaped and uploaded to YouTube.
Soon Jin Jin, the 27-year-old woman who lost her right leg to cancer, was dubbed the "wheelchair angel" by the Chinese government and media. The attention has whipped the Chinese public into a fury, with the Shanghai Daily described the man as a "violent Tibet separatist."
President Sarkozy has since sent Jing a personal invitation via three encoys to return to France.
But the Chinese people were not satisfied, and yesterday thousands of anonymous web sites and text messages circulated organizing mass demonstrations at French-owned Carrefour supermarkets in China.
According to Bloomberg, Carrefour is the biggest foreign retail chain by sales, and has already experienced a drop in revenues at the 15 stores targeted by protests. Emails and text messages received by Bloomber also mentioned 17-day protests from May 8 -24 at Carrefour–the same days as the Olympics– and against American chain McDonald’s.
The government, is urging caution and cool heads, expressed as ‘rational patriotism.’
Leave Your Comments