How Hong Kongers Show Which Businesses Are Friend or Foe

Hongkongers are adopting small-scale actions to keep the protest movement from stalling, among them a rating system for business for or against the uprising.
By Brendon Hong

HONG KONG—Yellow shop, blue shop, red shop, black shop?
That isn’t the first line in a modern nursery rhyme. 

Rather, it outlines an act of resistance that the people of Hong Kong participate in every day.
Recognizing that the path to true self-governance is one that will take years, if not longer, Hongkongers are adopting small-scale actions so that the protest movement does not stall. 

Medical professionals have daily strikes during daylight hours. 

In the evenings, people meet at certain public squares or in shopping mall atriums so they have a constant, regular presence. 

At night, some yell out protest slogans through their apartment windows.
Street-level actions don’t have the seven-figure turnout like months ago, and are often more scattered throughout the city. 

There’s worry that Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, will invoke emergency powers and cancel the upcoming district elections, where pro-democracy candidates are expected to grab many new seats. 

So, Hongkongers have shifted tactics, and are, for now, voting with their wallets.
For the past few weeks, lists of businesses have been circulating in Hong Kong, each name carrying a color code that defines the stance of its proprietors and general outlook regarding the ongoing protests that have evolved into a movement to shake off the Chinese Communist Party’s influence in the city’s affairs.
Shops and brands that are “yellow”—the color of the pro-democracy Umbrella Movement of 2014—are mostly local, and each in its own way supports those who wear black clothing, gas masks, and hard hats every weekend to translate city-wide discontent into street-level action. 

“Blue” businesses are those where you might find the staff wearing “I (heart) the police” T-shirts, as well as outspoken supporters of the establishment and Carrie Lam.
“Red” shops are affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party, while “black” shops—not to be confused with protester-black—are CCP fronts or belong to the Party through direct ownership or shell companies.
The lists serve as guidelines for consumption. 

Hongkongers are encouraged to spend their dollars at businesses like independent bookshops and certain eateries that are marked “yellow.” 

Restaurants that are “blue” have seen steep drops in footfalls in many districts because of the boycott. Starbucks is a chain that is often smashed up during large marches, because it is managed by local conglomerate Maxim’s Caterers; in September, Annie Wu, the daughter of Maxim’s founder, spoke before the United Nations Human Rights Council along with other tycoons, utilizing talking points from CCP propaganda to condemn the blackshirt protesters in her city.

Overtly Chinese businesses see the harshest attacks. 

A branch of Tong Ren Tang, a 350-year-old traditional Chinese medicine maker that was founded in Beijing, was set on fire on Sunday night. 

Throughout the month, Bank of China and China Construction Bank branches saw their ATMs torched in several neighborhoods in the city; some of these banks’ locations are now encased in steel walls to prevent protesters from forcing their way in.
The attacks on “blue,” “red,” and “black” locations have lasted for weeks in Hong Kong, and they remind us of scenes from when the blackshirts briefly seized the legislative building in July. 

There is chaos, but also discipline: No stealing, especially cash. 

Looting is forbidden.
In fact, after the fire set at a store opened by Xiaomi, a Chinese smartphone and consumer electronics company, was put out on Sunday night, one man who was found to be scavenging for new phones was apprehended and tied up by protesters, and then left on the street with a handwritten cardboard sign that read “thief.”
On some days, especially over the weekends, there’s a heavy dose of vigilantism on the streets in Hong Kong, yet support from the public remains high. 

A mid-October poll conducted by the Center for Communication and Public Opinion Survey at the Chinese University of Hong Kong indicates that more than 70 percent of people in the city believe that it is acceptable for protestors to use some level of force in the current conditions.
The yellow-blue dichotomy was originally meant to be a boycott campaign, and it quickly gained traction. (The “red” and “black” tags were added later.) 

After Chief Executive Carrie Lam invoked emergency powers to implement a ban on masks, fewer people have been willing to hit the streets for marches than in the summer (though many still wear face masks during their commutes and regular, daily situations to signal their dissatisfaction). Boycotts of “blue” businesses were designed to be a mode of daily participation in the larger blackshirt movement, so that people would be mindful of channeling their disposable income toward proprietors who keep the welfare of the city in mind.
This act may be small, but it’s a constant reminder that the Chinese Communist Party’s greatest weapon in Hong Kong is one that is commercial, wielded by its tycoon proxies and shell companies that are swallowing up swathes of industries.
In mid-September, local pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily ran a report that Lam had met with more than 30 senior managers of Chinese state-owned enterprises, discussing the possibility of these companies taking more control of various business sectors in Hong Kong. 

Lam denied that was the case, saying the meeting was routine.
And yet the CCP has a history of using businesses to distort public discourse in Hong Kong. 

The most explicit example is the Party’s progress in monopolizing the city’s media and publishing industries. 

The CCP owns two newspapers in the city, Wen Wei Po and Ta Kung Pao. 

The English-language broadsheet with the highest circulation in the city, the South China Morning Post, was bought in 2016 by Alibaba, which has become an e-commerce juggernaut with the blessing of Beijing. 

And as of four years ago, the Party’s liaison office in Hong Kong—its political representative in the city—enjoys around an 80 percent market share in book publishing, printing, distribution, and retail.
For individuals who refuse to compromise their principles, things can escalate quickly. 

In 2014, the once-liberal newspaper Ming Pao saw its chief editor nearly hacked to death by men armed with cleavers. 

It was widely believed that the assault was political motivated. 

On more than one occasion, the house of Apple Daily owner Jimmy Lai was firebombed.
Will the boycott of non-“yellow” businesses work? 

Likely not—at least not if the goal is to remove Chinese capital from the port city. 

Hong Kong and mainland China’s economies are inseparable. 

Look hard enough at any set of books, and you’ll likely find a Chinese supplier, customer, or even investor that is linked to the business. 

For now, those details are overlooked by many protesters. 

The blackshirt movement’s color-coded resistance is keeping the broader population engaged, asserting an acutely anti-CCP message in everyone’s minds at all times. 

In those terms, it has been extremely effective.

Greedy America's Money Cult: The Long List of Beijing Ass-Kissers

Don’t be mad at the NBA. Hundreds of U.S. companies have sold out to Chinese tyrants.

By Sally Jenkins

Get off the NBA’s back, all you people who want sports to be the children’s literature of your lost youth.

Somehow, because the Houston Rockets capitulated to their Chinese business partners, the league is now supposed to be a gutless violator of human rights?

You better start with General Electric.
Or KFC. 

Or how about Walmart?
It’s more than a little ludicrous for everyone from Ted Cruz to Beto O’Rourke to suddenly hand the NBA and the Rockets the tab for American toadying to authoritarians in Beijing. 

If they want to draw that line in the sand, they can draw it with any of their favorite dozen American corporations — only that wouldn’t be so politically convenient, would it?
It’s easier to hurl righteous outrage and umbrage at a large target such as Rockets star James Harden, who on Monday apologized to China for "hurt feelings" at the behest of his bosses. 

“We love China,” he said. 

It’s far more pat and satisfying to go all-in at Rockets management for making General Manager Daryl Morey apologize for his tweet over the weekend in support of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. 

“I did not intend my tweet to cause any offense to Rockets fans and friends of mine in China,” he said in a statement.
And, boy, isn’t it an easy viral sound clip to accuse the entire NBA of “blatant prioritization of profits over human rights,” as O’Rourke did, and call it an embarrassment, simply because the league called the incident “regrettable” and tried to patch things up with Chinese dictators?
You want to be angry at the NBA for cowering in the face of China’s authoritarian regime? 

You want to accuse NBA Commissioner Adam Silver of supporting a murderous dictatorship simply to further business interests in China? 

Fine. 

Good for you.
But understand the NBA is only imitating that smooth move patented by dozens of other fine, flag-waving American corporations in their dealings with China. 

A half-dozen American corporate sponsors set the template a decade ago at the Beijing Olympics, when they colluded in the silencing of U.S. athletes and were far more directly complicit in a host of human rights violations.
Remember what champs Visa and General Electric were when the Chinese refused to grant entry to American athlete Joey Cheek because he had been too audible of an activist against abuses in Darfur? 

And how about the courageous support Coca-Cola gave to Chinese dissidents when Beijing authorities cracked down on them in advance of those Games?
Never forget the standup position Johnson & Johnson took when Steven Spielberg quit as artistic director of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies because Beijing not only failed to honor a single one of the reform promises it had made in procuring the right to host the Games but actually went on a terroristic bender against its own citizens, destroying whole neighborhoods, enlisting slave labor and throwing anyone who didn’t like it into a camp.
Ford. 

GM. 

Starbucks. 

Papa John’s. 

All of them do massive business with China. 

Abercrombie & Fitch. 

Boeing. 

Procter & Gamble. 

Start with them. 

All of them have long known what the conditions and equations are for doing business in the China market.
Australian journalist Geremie Barmé, who has covered China for many years, sums it up in a phrase: “contentious friendship.”
“To be a "friend" of China, the foreigner is often expected to stomach unpalatable situations, and keep silent in the face of egregious behavior,” he has written. 

“A "friend" of China might enjoy the privilege of offering the occasional word of caution in private; in the public arena he or she is expected to have the good sense and courtesy to be ‘objective.’ That is to toe the line, whatever that happens to be. The concept of ‘friendship’ thus degenerates into little more than an effective tool for emotional blackmail and enforced complicity.”
Throughout the Beijing Olympics, American companies remained silent. 

So did IOC President Jacques Rogge. 

When Rogge finally did open his mouth to protest someone’s conduct, it wasn’t anyone in China’s leaderships. 

The man he decided to pick was Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, for his bad manners in celebrating too boldly. 

The outrage at the NBA is more than a little remindful of that.
Yes, the NBA has made a mutually beneficial commercial accommodation with China. 

There are 800 million Chinese viewers of the league, according to Time, and there is a 30-year media partnership. 

You have a problem with that or consider it gutless? 

Then you have a problem with literally hundreds of American companies.

Communist Cafe

Starbucks becomes latest target of Hong Kong protester boycott
AFP
A man cleans up graffiti put up by protesters on the front of a Starbucks coffee shop in Hong Kong on September 30, 2019, a day after the protest-wracked financial hub witnessed its fiercest political violence in weeks. 

Starbucks has emerged as the latest brand to fall foul of Hong Kong's pro-democracy protesters after a family member of the local restaurant chain that owns the local franchise spoke out against demonstrators.
Multiple branches were covered with graffiti over the weekend as the city convulsed with some of the most intense clashes between hardcore protesters and riot police in weeks.
One cafe in the district of Wanchai was daubed with slogans saying "boycott" as well as insults to the police and Maxim's Caterers, a major Hong Kong restaurant chain that runs Starbucks outlets in the city.
The boycott illustrates the huge pressures on international brands as Hong Kong is shaken by its worst political unrest in decades.
Beijing is piling pressure on businesses to publicly condemn the protests.
Those that do risk a protester backlash, but staying silent risks financial punishment on the mainland, a far more lucrative market.
The boycott campaign against Maxim's snowballed after Annie Wu, the daughter of Maxim's wealthy founder, delivered a speech earlier this month in which she condemned the protests and said Beijing's hardline stance against democracy advocates should be supported.
She was speaking at the United Nations' human rights council in Geneva alongside Pansy Ho, a billionaire casino magnate who made similar calls.
Their comments were seized on by protesters and portrayed as an example of how Hong Kong's wealthy elite are out of touch with public sentiment and in the pockets of Beijing.
Prominent democracy campaigner Joshua Wong was among those calling for a boycott of Starbucks since Wu's speech and more than 50,000 people have signed a petition asking the Seattle-headquartered company to sever ties with Maxim's.
“We herein urge the Board of Directors to consider whether Maxim's truly represents the social values of Starbucks and terminate the franchise to Maxim's immediately,” Wong wrote on Twitter on Friday.
Maxim's did not respond to requests for comment on Monday but it has previously issued statements distancing itself from Wu's comments and saying she is not employed by the company.
Other major brands have been rounded on by protesters, either for pro-Beijing comments made by owners or because the owners themselves are linked to the Communist Party in China.
Yoshinoya, a popular noodle chain, and Genki Sushi — also owned by Maxim's — have been repeatedly tagged with graffiti along with Bank of China branches.
Brands deemed to be sympathetic to protesters have also had a torrid time and faced boycotts on the mainland.
Authorities in China tore into Cathay Pacific after staff joined protests, forcing the company to go through stricter regulatory checks.
The moves led to major staff changes on Cathay's board, including the resignation of its chief executive officer, as well as multiple staff being fired for expressing pro-democracy sentiments, something some employees have described as a “purge”.