Discounts at Carrefour!!

Recently the French and more specifically their major retail store in China, Carrefour, has been rolled into a campaign mixed up with both boycott and anti-boycott. 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 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.

Personally Carrefour is often too crowded therefore I support a boycott that drives customers away and createes discounts - its great. However, I thought it would be interesting to show you some messages I found on someone elses blog illuminating some intersting views of China's netizens:

"We hope you are able to boycott Carrefour at least on 1 May, to deliver with an empty Carrefour on 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 spread all over the country, and we anticipate your presence! Thank you."

"Support the Olympics, oppose Tibet-independence; boycott French products and Carrefour!"

"I feel it is so ridiculous when hearing that so many people are organizing a boycott against Carrefour. I bear great sorrow for their blindness, which is as stupid as the boycotts against Japanese, American and all western products a long time ago. Do you have to isolate China from the world again? Reviewing the anti-Japan activity years ago, I wonder what we commoners have really got to campaign for. When the tension between the governments began to ease, the anti-Japan action that slightly crossed the line received a crackdown and we have not yet learnt our 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 travel 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?"

"Boycott Carrefour? Come on! You are actually boycotting the Chinese manufactures, Chinese workmen there and the country of our own since Carrefour pays taxes to our government!!! Not to mention 95 percent of the goodss sold in Carrefour are made by Chinese hands!! Are you able to boycott the Paris mayor? BS."

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

"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-autocracy and corruption. So tragic man."

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


Wow!

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 so, the chances of a successful boycott campaign is doubted, as the predominant public opinion years ago for a boycott over Japan didn't last very long. And although nationalist propaganda has covered the airwaves and newspapers for weeks, the goverenment has now noticed that people are aggresively directing their anger toward foreigners thus tarnishing China's image as a hospitable and welcoming nation - with the Olympics and the arrival of 1.5 million foreigners only a few months away this could spell disaster. The goverenment will use all of its psychological intruments to dissuage the public from overprotesting and striking out in anger, the Chinese will once again love foreigners and the French in time for the Opening Games.


Otherwise this wave of self expression and protest transferred through technological channels difficult to restrict by the government, will continue to fuel the fire, and perhaps those who started it, the Communist Party, will find themselves in the middle of it. Can you smell a revolution.... we'll see.