Their gain is not being associated with exploitation and forced labor.

The idea that intelligence agencies and governments would coordinate such a campaign is absurd. First, the government doesn’t have that kind over influence over corporations and news outlets. I mean, the West isn’t China after all. Second, there are far easier ways to discredit China, like point to their very real abuse of people in Hong Kong.

It's worth remembering that all many of these companies did is make the weakest, most inconsequential PR statements possible. They didn't take any kind of action against China, they didn't boycott Chinese goods or even Xinjiang cotton, they didn't even take a position on whether Xinjiang had slave labour. All they did was acknowledge several years ago that there were allegations of slave labour in Xinjiang and that, if they were true, that went against what they stood for - and that was enough for the Chinese government to effectively shut down their operations and sales in China.

I agree with you, yet it seems pretty common for people in the West to associate sportswear with sweatshops, which some argue is exploitation, so I see why people may be cynical about corporations caring about these things.

Twitter has executives who are also 'psychological warfare' officers in the British Army:

"The senior Twitter executive with editorial responsibility for the Middle East is also a part-time officer in the British Army’s psychological warfare unit"

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/twitter-executive-also-pa...

> The idea that intelligence agencies and governments would coordinate such a campaign is absurd.

I don't think it is absurd. FUD seeds only need to be planted and social media and news outlets will be more than happy to make this viral by themselves. Once public opinion is perceiving things in a certain way the situation becomes very difficult for companies, which obviously do not want their sales or image hurt and the facts become irrelevant. This is the subtlety our Western system where influence and fabrication of narrative still exist but are much more subtle than the blunt tools used in countries like China.

It is quite likely in my opinion that the Xinjiang cotton 'issue' is at the very least massively overblown. This is a modern, mechanised industry and China is not exactly short of labour so the idea that Chinese cotton is produced by forced labour seems far-fetched and it is 'interesting' that this somehow suddenly becomes such a global issue.

Shooting down Chinese cotton would not only hurt China and perhaps foster unrest in Xinjiang (people would lose their jobs), which can be useful to the West, but would also serve the economic interests of China's adversaries. After all it so happens that the top 3 cotton producers are India, China, and the USA, in that order. So this is very possibly a geopolitical powerplay.

I’m not buying any clothes from any company involved in this. It’s pretty simple.

Calling out negative reporting from China as attempts to “discredit” smells.

> When can we ease up the geopolitical conflict

Where? Between China and the rest of the world? Or in general?

When there are no systematic government sanctioned human rights violations. These aren’t exactly “internal” affairs. Just like jailing and silencing. dissenters isn’t.

"just live in peace with the other peoples" - Does this apply to people living in China?

Because the way China manages its affairs not only affects the Chinese people, but the rest of the world. Look no further than China’s encroachment on the territorial waters of the Philippines and other parts of the South China Sea. The financial advantages China gains by using forced labor, IP theft, and environmental damage provide China power which it uses to exert force on the rest of the world.

China is still the single greatest threat to world peace, from Tiananmen Square to ethnic cleansing, the government of China is a despotic regime of murderers. Anything the west can do to combat this, it’s a good thing, and shame on any American brand that puts profits over human rights.

Given that Americans have committed more war crimes and human rights abuses than all other countries combined and has caused unimaginable destruction, pain and suffering in the world - I find it funny people complaining that China’s acrions are apparently affecting the world.

I mean, WW2 still counts, right?

Two wrongs do not make a right. This FUD will not excuse China’s criminal behavior.

The US owns 5 colonies iirc so by your argument we should be sanctioned

"let countries manage their own affairs instead of continually attempting to be World Police and stirring up conflict"

What about Cambodia or Rwanada? Those were internal conflicts as far as your definition goes? Was it alright or not? Where is the line?

Division of ethnic groups in Rwanda was a consequence of German and Belgian colonisation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide#Pre-independe...

Indeed. Double standards are common in global politics.

Going all the way back to the cultural revolution, China's goal was to unite the world under communism. They have been the antagonist from the start.

Now, I don't think China is a comic book villain - I doubt many people within the government are hatching nefarious plans to convert America to communism in 2021. But with all the horrible shit they do it seems like it sometimes.

America has a huge rap sheet of bad shit it's done, but at least in Western democracies we make (slow) progress towards being more moral and equitable societies. I'm convinced China goes the other direction.

With that going on I don't think neither China nor America will ever be able to overcome the current us-vs-them mentality. And tbh while I don't want a war with China, I don't think we should just accept their actions and move on.

> Going all the way back to the cultural revolution, China's goal was to unite the world under communism. They have been the antagonist from the start.

Why do you think this? Yes I know they're called the "Communist Party", but going from that to "unite the world under communism" is a big step.

Kishore Mahbubani, ex-UN Security Council head, ex-Singapore diplomat, says that China is communist in name only. In reality, the CCP is more like the "Chinese Civilization Party", Mahbubani said. Their goal is to advance the interests of China, not to promote world-wide communism. The opening-up since the 80s have been relentless. It's been going on for decades and they're still further opening up.

Why do you believe that their goal is to unite the world under communism?

I said their goal was to unite the world under communism, because it was:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_revolution

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_split

> In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Sino-Soviet debates about the interpretation of orthodox Marxism became specific disputes about the USSR's policies of national de-Stalinization and international peaceful coexistence with the Western world, which Mao decried as revisionism. Against that ideological background, China took a belligerent stance towards the West, and publicly rejected the USSR's policy of peaceful coexistence between the Eastern and Western blocs.

So that means they are no longer like that. Then it's not fair to say they "have been antagonist from the start", right? Imagine putting that same label on Japan because they were imperialist.

My point was, while they don't (openly) try to convert others to communism, China still sees America as the enemy and America sees China as the enemy. With good reason.

> Going all the way back to the cultural revolution, China's goal was to unite the world under communism. They have been the antagonist from the start.

Wrong and uninformed. They've not invaded another country since Vietnam in the 1979s, they're more interested in expanding their soft power. Also they haven't followed the communist ideology for a long time, abandoning it when Deng opened up China.

> America has a huge rap sheet of bad shit it's done, but at least in Western democracies we make (slow) progress towards being more moral and equitable societies. I'm convinced China goes the other direction.

In fact as a non-US observer I think the US has made negative progress on democracy thanks to Trump. Thanks to that China is now doubling down on its version of democracy.

> And tbh while I don't want a war with China, I don't think we should just accept their actions and move on.

Big powers will always get away with shit like this. When George Bush needed to get oil out of Iraq, he had to convince the UN security council that the war was not illegal. China helped them on this.