Fake Air Force 1 Favorite 

Practitioner: 

Date: 

Apr 26 2021

Location: 

Putian and NIKE

Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) was registered in 2009 and headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. It is a non-profit international membership organization with representative offices in China, India, Pakistan, and London. It has more than 400 member organizations around the world, mainly including cotton growers, cotton textile enterprises, and retail brands. The group aims to promote what it calls "Better Cotton" around the world.

BCI issued a statement on October 21, 2020, claiming that "there is a risk of human rights violations and forced labor in Xinjiang, China", and decided to suspend the issuance of BCI cotton licenses in Xinjiang, and fabricated the so-called "forced labor" to discredit Xinjiang cotton. Based on the above statement, in March 2021, H&M's statement that it would "stop using Xinjiang cotton" caused dissatisfaction among Chinese netizens. In fact, nearly two years had published with Xinjiang cotton "cutting" speech of foreign enterprises still have many. Among them are BCI members Burberry, Adidas, Nike, New Balance, and others.

Putian is a city in Guangdong Province, China. This city is famous for its huge chain of manufacture of Shanzhai (fake) shoes from lots of famous brands like Nike and Adidas. To express the attitude of opposition, one of the fake shoe manufacturers design a pair of fake Nike air force 1. This manufacturer printed Nike's Xinjiang-related statements on foreign websites verbatim on a pair of Air Force One shoes. However, ironically, he also inscribed on his shoes the cotton towns that historically enslaved blacks in America. The left insole shows real photos of machines picking cotton in Xinjiang, while the right insole shows real photos of the American enslavement of black people. In the end, the manufacturer burned the shoes and sent the remains of the shoes to Nike's global headquarters along with the video. It later announced that they would not be selling the shoes, but that the design documents would be available for sharing.

Posted by Yuchen Zhang on

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