China: Carrefour Under Boycott Threat

by Bob Chen

Carrefour has been rolled into a campaign mixed up with both boycott and anti-boycott.

Recently, a widely circulated message writes

我们希望您至少在5月1日这一天抵制家乐福，让5月1日家乐福空荡荡的卖场向西方传达一个信息：中国 不可辱！中国人民不可欺！
抵制家乐福的活动将在全国各地展开，期待您的参与！谢谢您。

We hope you are able to boycott Carrefour at least on 1 May, to deliver, by the empty Carrefour that day, one message to the western world: Chinese shouldn’t be humiliated! Chinese people shouldn’t be insulted!
The boycott against Carrefour is going to spreading all over the country, and we anticipate your presence! Thank you.

Carrefour, the French retail giant, is the newest target on the list of what cyber-nationalists in China hate and aim at. Cell phone text messages calling on boycotts are popping up, over 5000 net cafes in China, as Daqi.com summed up, have been rife with posts against Carrefour, and quite a few radical netizens have already made the slogans into practice.

The boycott is supposed to be caused by the recent grief and violence the Olympic torch relay suffered from in France and the saying that a big shareholder of Carrefour, LVMH group, has donated money to the Dalai Lama.

The original text of the widely circulated appeal also explains the cause of the campaign,

刚刚结束的法国PARIS站OLYMPIC圣火传递，并不象大多数国人所知道的那样平静。在中国人把象征友谊与和平的OLYMPIC圣火传进法国时，我们看到法国人和 法国go-vern-ment都做了什么：
1.圣火传递前，法国当地电视台号召市民上街抗议示威，说：“不要让中国的旗子飘的到处都是”。
2.圣火传递中，火炬在Z D势力及其支持者的暴力阻挠下，被迫四次熄灭；
3.负责安保的法国pol.ice任由Z D分子在其眼皮底下抢夺火炬，殴打中国残疾火炬手，却袖手旁观；
4.火炬所到之处，法国人成群结队地举着Z D分子的旗子，叫嚣“XZ独立”、“中国羞耻”等口号，向中国示威；
5.成群的法国青年甚至抢夺中国留学生手中的五星红旗，当众撕碎，并殴打中国留学生；
6.法国巴黎市go-vern-ment在圣火经过市政厅时，悬挂出支持XZ独立的横幅和标语，全体市议员胸前佩带支持XZ独立的标章，使得原定于在市政厅前举行的庆祝仪式不得不取消；
7.法国的主流媒体在圣火传递结束后，以这样的标题进行了回顾：“火炬在巴黎惨败”法国《费加罗报》，“给中国一记耳光”法国《解放报》。

The Olympic torch relay that just ended in Paris is not as peaceful as most of Chinese know about. Let’s see what French and its government have done when Chinese carried the torch, a symbol of peace and friendship into their territory.
1. Before the relay, a French TV station called on people to protest on street for the reason that they “don’t want Chinese flags flaunting all over”.
2. The torch was forced to extinguish for 4 times under the violent disruptions of Tibet separatists.
3. The French police in charge of security simply stood by to see the separatists snatching the torch, and striking the disabled torch carrier.
4. At where the torch went by, hordes of French waved the flag of separatists, clamoring “Free Tibet’, “Shame on China” to protest against China.
5. Groups of young men even scrambled the Chinese students’ Five-star flags and tore them up, two sides in conflict.
6. When the sacred fire passed by the City Hall of Paris, the banners and slogans of pro-Tibet independence were hung out and all the alderman put on the pro-separatism badges, a behavior that made the planned ceremony there cancelled.
7. The major media in France reviewed the torch relay with such headlines— Fiasco in Paris(Figaro) and A Slap on China

And it’s not unusual to see such comments tightly following up the petition.

完全抵制家乐福。
Completely boycott Carrefour.
坚决抵制
Resolutely boycott!

Furthermore, QQ groups all over China were set up to recruit boycott activists. A list shows that places including Chongqing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, more than 20 areas totally, have joined this cyber campaign, during which netizens can communicate by the IM tool to make the whole protest more organizational.

In fact at Kunming, a city in southern China, netizens have extended their slogans to the reality

by protesting in front of the local Carrefour. The banner reads:
支持奥运，反对藏独，抵制法货，抵制家乐福

Support Olympic, oppose Tibet-independence; boycott French products and Carrefour!

The following pictures show the protest in the city of Wuhan. Notice that the banner has exactly the same word as that in Kunming.

A netizen commented:

顶礼！

Salute to her!

A-dish-of-cuisine said:

这帖子不顶我就不是中国人
mm，你是我们中国人的榜样！
比那些漠然无视的人狠狠一巴掌！

I were not a Chinese if I didn’t bump up this post
Girl, you are the Chinese idol!
A tough slap over those indifferent people.
Anti-boycott is also on fire

This time the rivaling voice doesn’t fade as years ago when the appeal of boycotting Japan products was at climax. Even on Tianya.com, a well-known marketplace of bold clamors and patriotism, the petitions of anti-boycott don’t shy away.

In Tianya, netizen Lepel said in his post “you are so unwise to boycott Carrefour, or, you think us too unwise”,

看到很多人在发起和组织抵制法国零售业巨头家乐福的活动，感觉实在可笑，同时也深为国人的愚昧而痛心。就象之前的抵制日 货、抵制美货，或更久远的抵制洋货 运动一样愚昧。难道，非要把中国孤立于这个世界才好？难道，非要再搞一次“闭关锁国”才罢？想象当初的反日活动，作为一个老百姓，我们得到了什么好处？而 政府在双方关系缓和后，却又开始“镇压”有些失控的反日活动。……..è¿™ 样的教训还不够，现在又要反法，好了，你抵制了一个家乐福，便宜的只是其他超市，老百姓得到的只是要多跑一些路、多花一些钱去买日用品，还会得到什么？等 有朝一日，法国换了总统或对华政策，到时候又回到“中法友谊万古长存”的路子上来是早晚的事，到了那时候在看看今天大家的举动难道不觉得可笑吗？

I feel it so ridiculous when hearing that so many people are organizing a boycott against Carrefour. I bear great sorrow for their blindness, which is as much stupid as the boycotts against Japanese, American and all western products long time ago. Do you have to isolate China from the world again? Reviewing the anti-Japan activity years ago, I wonder what we commons have really got the campaign. When the tension between the governments came to ease, the anti-Japan action that slightly crossed the line got a crackdown….and we have not yet learnt a lesson from that, and now we are going to have anti-France.
Fine, with the boycott, you would simply favor advantage to all other supermarkets and let people go further and spend more for daily shopping. Anything else?
Someday in the future when a new French president comes into power or the policy gets changed, everything will just go back to “Long live China-France friendship”, sooner or later. At that time, won’t it be laughable to look back at what we are doing now?

在爽与不爽中徘徊 analyzed that it will be the Chinese people that really suffer from the boycott, if it comes true.

抵制家乐福？拜托 实际上你抵制的是那些中国的生产厂家 家乐福的中国员工 还有什么 还有我们自己国家 因为家乐福在对中国政府上税！！！你能抵制到巴黎市长么？扯淡吧

Boycott Carrefour? Come on! You are actually boycotting the Chinese manufactures, Chinese workmen there and the country of our own, because Carrefour pays tax to our government!!! Are you able to boycott Paris mayor? BS.

HAINAN-COCONUT-WIND（海南椰风）ridicules,

我干嘛要抵制，我朝都没有号召，没准过段日子又在大谈中法友好呢！以前和越南又是打战又是谴责的，现在不还是亲切友好的会谈，不还是中越人民友谊嘛！死的那些战士，谁他妈管他们！cao！

Why should I boycott? Our dynasty (allusion to the ruling party-translator) has not yet called on, and perhaps soon they will talk greatly on the China-France friendship.
In history, it used to fight hard with Vietnam, but what about now? Friendly conversation and fellowship between us two peoples! Who care about those soldiers died there? F…

柳州刺史 recalled what he was doing ten years ago,

10年前，中国大使馆被霉菌炸了，我比现在的粪粪还粪粪，回想一下，真想抽自己嘴巴

Ten years ago when the Chinese embassy was bombed by U.S army I was even more indignant that the “patriotic young men” today. Thinking over that I really wish to slap myself.

东边日出西边女 might be facing an embarrassment,

　我们这个中小城市政府目前正在加大力度引进家乐福.各的小官员忙得不亦乐乎.
我该怎么办,抵制?和我D政府不是一条心了.

Our city is taking pain to introduce the Carrefour in, every official extremely busy on that plan. What should I do? Boycott? Then I will be clashing with our party and country.

城南笑笑 grumbled

反日反法发德反韩反台反意反澳反越反英反美•••åå…¨ä¸–ç•Œ••åæ•´ä¸ªå®‡å®™ã€‚就是不反独裁和腐败。悲哀的人

Anti-Japan anti-France anti-German anti-Korea anti-Taiwan anti-Italy anti-Australia anti-Vietnam anti-Britain anti-U.S…anti-world…anti-universe.
But NO anti-autarchy and corruption. So tragic men.

And Adaste concluded,

这就叫政府挖坑，热血青年栽树

This is called “the government digs holes, and zealous youngsters plant trees”.

Finally, an analogy might reveal how a lot of people view this patriotic action.
Magicsilence said,

粪青乃我党的安全套,高潮之后即弃之

The patriotic youngsters are the condom of the party— discarded right after orgasm.

The points of the two camps diverge sharply. Rumors have been heard that Carrefour is going to make considerable discounts on 1 May to counteract the planned boycott. And it has announced that it will always be the friend of Chinese. But even not so, the chances of a successful boycott campaign is doubted, as the predominant public opinion years ago for a boycott over Japan didn’t make a good shot, while today the each side is equally strong.

(Note: Quoted opinions without given links are comments on threads in Tianya.cn that discuss the boycott. Thanks to the net forums.)