BEIJING (AP) - A Chinese Internet campaign calling for a boycott of French retail giant Carrefour gained momentum Tuesday, part of a nationalistic counterattack against protests that marred the Beijing Olympics' torch relay in Paris, London and San Francisco earlier this month.
Messages on online Chinese chat boards, petitions and text messages have urged people not to buy goods from Carrefour — one of the most popular supermarket chains in China — starting May 1.
Many online groups and a petition at a Web site called "anti-jialefu.cn," the Chinese name for Carrefour, called for the boycott, saying protests during the Paris torch relay against Chinese policies in Tibet were an attack on China.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has also said he is considering not attending the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics because of China's crackdown on recent protests in Tibet.
"The French people and government ignored the serious spirit of the Olympic torch, and ignored Chinese people's feelings," the petition said. "We encourage you not to go to Carrefour again to buy goods, and to go to other supermarkets ... China cannot be insulted!"
Text messages calling for a boycott of Carrefour have also been sent to mobile phones in Beijing, urging recipients to forward them to 20 other people.
It is unclear how widespread support is for a boycott, which would not start for two weeks. It has been featured on China's main Web portals, drawing hundreds of pages of positive comments. A survey on Web portal NetEase said 94 percent of nearly 11,000 respondents backed a boycott of French goods.
The Global Times, published by the People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party, said Tuesday that "many" Chinese in France and China were calling for a boycott.
However, louder calls for a boycott of Japanese products circulated during anti-Japanese protests in 2005 but never gained traction.
The Carrefour Group said in a statement Tuesday that it has backed Beijing's bid to host the Olympic Games from the beginning.
"Information running on the Internet in China, which would aim at giving the Carrefour Group some role in the Chinese political actuality or the international relations, are wrong and baseless," it said.
Carrefour is the second-largest hypermarket in the world after Wal-Mart Stores Inc. It has 122 stores in China employing 40,000 people.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu refused to condemn the boycott call.
"Recently some Chinese people expressed their views and sentiments. I think there is a reason for this, and the French side needs to review and consider it. I believe the Chinese people will express their reasonable appeal in accordance with the law," she told a news conference.
Many shoppers at a Carrefour in downtown Beijing on Tuesday had not heard of the boycott call.
But Han Qing, who was browsing outside the store, said she agreed with the boycott.
"If you are not friendly to China then why would Chinese people go to your supermarkets to shop?" she said. "This is a mutual thing, if you are unfriendly to us, there is no point in us shopping in your supermarkets." |