Protesters shouted anti-French slogans at the entrance of the French retail chain store Carrefour in Chongqing, China, on Thursday.
BEIJING — They came. They expressed patriotic fervor. Then they shopped.
On Thursday, the first day of a planned boycott against Carrefour, a French department store chain here, there were a few low-key protests around the country but most Carrefour outlets did a brisk business in peanut oil, petit fours and family packs of lychee juice.
The boycott call, publicized through text messages and popular websites, has been urging Chinese consumers to avoid the stores as a way to punish France for what China considers its shabby reception of the Olympic torch. During the Paris leg of the relay last month, pro-Tibetan agitators lunged at a wheelchair-bound Chinese torch bearer. The images that captured her shocked and wounded expression have fueled a backlash against Western countries that many here believe are seeking to spoil China’s Olympic moment of glory as Beijing prepares to play host to the Summer Games.
It did not help that the Paris City Council followed up by making the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader-in-exile, an honorary citizen. Many Chinese believe the Dalai Lama was responsible for anti-Chinese rioting in Tibet last month.
On Thursday, the start of a three-day national holiday here, there were reports of small rallies at a dozen Carrefour outlets around the country but the absence of any mammoth groundswell, coupled by the throngs of unapologetic shoppers, suggested that nationalistic fury may be fading. “Politics is one thing but the people have to eat,” said Zheng Wu, 55, a Beijing housewife whose shopping cart was loaded with a 12-roll bundle of toilet paper, two large sacks of rice, a box of corn flakes, three pairs of pink flip flops and a plunger.
The government has also been working hard to dampen the anti-French zealotry. In recent days, government ministers have gone on television reminding people that the 40,000 employees at the nation’s 112 Carrefour stores are Chinese. Newspaper editorials have hinted that bygones might as well be bygones, urging citizens to heartily embrace foreign friends, about 1.5 million of whom will be arriving here in August for the Olympics. “We Smile to the World” read an editorial headline in the People’s Daily celebrating the 100-day countdown to the games.
In case that did not do the trick, state censors made it hard for organizers to get the word out. In recent days, some text messages championing the boycott have also been blocked; on Thursday, typing Carrefour into Chinese-language search engines returned blank pages explaining that such results “do not conform to relevant law and policy.”
Still, a few protests drew hundreds of people to Carrefour stores in Xian, Chongqing, Shenyang and Changsha, although the police made sure the rallies were brief. A demonstration in Fuzhou reportedly drew 400 people, according to Xinhua, the official news agency, with students carrying Chinese flags and banners saying “Oppose Tibet Independence” and “Love China.” The authorities quickly dispersed the crowds and hauled away those who refused to yield, Xinhua said.
Here in Beijing, which has nine Carrefour outlets, store clerks said the crowds were noticeably thinner, especially for a holiday. The only reported protest in the capital was at a Carrefour near city’s university district, where despite a heavy police presence, a young man rushed up to the entrance holding aloft a sign that said, “Boycott Carrefour, Denounce CNN.” (The CNN reference reflected popular anger here over what China considers CNN’s unfair coverage of the Tibet protests.)
The man, who wore a white face mask and a t-shirt covered in nationalistic slogans, was quickly bundled away by police. A few people in the crowd grabbed his sign and struggled against the police to hold it up. Onlookers cheered them on with chants of “Go China!” and “Go Beijing!”
But as a few hundred others looked on with evident curiosity, the police managed to wrest the sign away and lead several young men into white police vans. Then they told everyone to disburse, saying it was for “everyone’s safety.”
At the opposite end of town, shoppers at another Carrefour were happy to fill their carts without interference. A handful of older people said they had not heard of the boycott call but others, clearly taken aback by a reporter’s questions, insisted they had only purchased a few low-cost necessities. “We should oppose Westerners who try to bring down China,” said Li Chen, 22, a biology student, as he left the store with a week’s worth of staples. He then opened his bags to prove he had avoided foreign-made goods. Asked about the bottles of Pepsi, he said, “These days, everything is made in China.”
Many shoppers, however, said they were opposed to the protests and condemned those who they blamed for fomenting xenophobia at a time when China is eager to embrace the outside world. Guo Sheng Zhang, 26, who recently quit his job as a hotel worker, said a boycott would only damage China’s image and potentially mar the Olympics. “This is so stupid,” he said. “We’re only hurting ourselves. And what about the Chinese employees who will lose their job?”
Shi Anbin, a professor of media studies at Qinghua University in Beijing, said he thought anti-French sentiment would quickly subside, and not just because of government intervention. He noted that French officials have tried to make amends for the torch debacle by dispatching French Senate President Christian Poncelet to personally apologize to the disabled fencer who was attacked in Paris. President Nicholas Sarkozy also invited the athlete, Jin Jing, to a state visit. In recent days Carrefour executives have given interviews in the China press expressing their horror at the incident and denying rumors that their company provides financing for Tibetan independence groups.
Noting the long-standing and warm relationship between China and France, Professor Shi attributed the anti-French outburst to the acute rage one feels when insulted by a friend. “I think the French understood that what happened with the torch in Paris was a loss of face,” he said. “And they made sure to resolve it quickly.”
As she stood in the checkout line of a Carrefour in Beijing, Wang Junyu, 41, a waitress enjoying her day off, said she works too hard to pay attention to boycott campaigns and anti-foreign demonstrations. She was, however, quite pleased with her shopping excursion. “Look at this,” she said, holding aloft a tub of ice cream. “I don’t know much about the French but this is a really good price.”
