Fast Retailing, owner of the Uniqlo apparel chain, is closely monitoring to see if Chinese demand for its products is affected by chairman Tadashi Yanai’s reported comment that the company isn’t using cotton from Xinjiang.
Yanai’s remark has become a popular topic of discussion on Chinese social networking sites and Yamaguchi-based Fast Retailing is “watching the situation carefully”, including the possibility that Chinese consumers will boycott Uniqlo products in protest, spokesperson Seikei Itoh told Bloomberg News by phone on Saturday.
Yanai said in BBC interview published this week that Uniqlo doesn’t source cotton from that region of China’s far west, where the US has restricted trade on concerns over human rights.
His remark came after Beijing said in September that it would investigate the parent company of Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein for suspected boycotting of cotton from Xinjiang.
The Greater China region accounted for more than a fifth of JPY3.1 trillion ($27.7 billion) of the Fast Retailing’s revenue in the year ended August 2024, according to filings. Uniqlo was operating 2,509 stores worldwide as of the end of September, including 1,031 in Hong Kong, Taiwan and China’s mainland.
Itoh declined to comment on the possible impact of the chairman’s remark on the company’s operations.
See also: China resumes multiple-entry visas for Shenzhen to Hong Kong
US and European companies have been under pressure to pull business from factories that make clothes and other products in Xinjiang, where workers’ groups have documented alleged forced labour camps and other poor conditions. China disputes the claims.
