✊🏽🏢 How Boycotts Are Redrawing the Global Map

The geopolitical cost of picking sides

Mar 14, 2025

∙ Paid

Boycotts are nothing new. They are one of the basic tradeoffs of doing business. At any moment, consumers can be triggered or angered, causing a snowball effect as society rallies against a specific business or group. However, over the past few years, geopolitics has become a catalyzing force, pushing large segments of society to walk away from brands they have long cherished.

In China, for example, boycotts have been steadily rising against Western and Asian firms that appear to challenge China’s claim to Hong Kong and Taiwan, or who put the spotlight on China’s human rights record.

One of the most well-known examples is H&M, the Swedish retail giant.

At the start of 2021, H&M decided to stop using cotton from Xinjiang over fears of forced labor and growing pressure from Western governments. The backlash was stunning. Not only did H&M sales in China plummet 23% (in Q2 2021, compared to the previous year) but H&M’s products were effectively scrubbed from China’s digital world, as social media and e-commerce platforms closed their doors to the iconic firm.

A year later, in 2022, H&M sales were still down 42% in China in a single quarter.