KFC Targeted in Protests Over South China Sea
HONG KONG — Protests against the South China Sea ruling by a tribunal in The Hague broke out in several Chinese cities on Monday, with people targeting KFC outlets as a symbol of United States interests.
Last week, the tribunal ruled in favor of the Philippines in its case against China, rejecting Beijing’s claims to historic rights in the South China Sea. Many in China accused the United States of pushing the Philippines to pursue the case.
KFC outlets in about a dozen cities, including Hangzhou, in Zhejiang Province; Changsha, in Hunan Province; and Yangzhou, in Jiangsu Province, were targeted by protests and calls for a boycott on Monday, according to a report from Sohu News, a Chinese online news outlet. But the campaign was far smaller than previous nationalist boycotts, and state media outlets warned protesters to avoid any illegal behavior.
There have been no major protests outside embassies in Beijing. The Philippine Embassy in particular was protected by plainclothes and uniformed police officers after the tribunal’s ruling last week.
The first sign of the KFC campaign was a banner unfurled on Sunday outside an outlet in the northern province of Hebei. “Boycott the U.S., Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. Love the Chinese people,” the banner read. “What you eat is KFC. What is lost is the face of our ancestors.”
KFC has been one of the most successful fast-food outlets in China. Its owner, Yum Brands, has said that it intends this year to sell its China operations, which include Pizza Hut outlets.
Patriotic boycotts have a long history in China. In 1919, after the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I transferred Germany’s territorial concessions in China to Japan, many students protested with a boycott of Japanese goods.
In 2005, protests and boycott calls erupted in China over changes to Japanese history textbooks that many in China saw as playing down the brutality of the Japanese Imperial Army in World War II. Ahead of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, some people in China started a short-lived boycott of Carrefour, the French retailer, over pro-Tibet protests in Paris during the Olympic torch run. And four years ago, anti-Japanese protests reignited over the Japanese government’s purchase of islands in the East China Sea that China also claims.
Such protests can spill out of control, sometimes with unintended consequences. In 2012, a Chinese man in the western city of Xi’an, in Shaanxi Province, was beaten with a bicycle lock and partially paralyzedafter he tried to stop a mob from trashing his new Toyota. Bumper stickers reading “My car is Japanese but my heart is Chinese” soon began appearing across the country.
There are signs that the Chinese authorities want to avoid widespread protests this year. Phrases such as “South China Sea” and “KFC” have been among the most censored on social media in recent days, according toWeiboscope, a monitoring service from the University of Hong Kong.
While the state news media has denounced the tribunal’s decision, it has also poured cold water on calls to protest.
“As Chinese people, our hearts are tied up with the country’s fate, exposing the injustice behind the ‘South China Sea arbitration farce’ is the embodiment of patriotic feeling,” Xinhua, the state news service, said on Tuesday. “But if that feeling leads to illegal behavior that destroys social order, then it’s mistaken to label it ‘patriotic.’ ”
The state-run newspaper China Daily warned that such protests would also harm Chinese citizens. Many “foreign-funded enterprises in China, such as KFC, have been localized and mostly employ local people and purchase raw materials from China,” it said.
(Source : nytimes.com)
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