BEIJING, China (Reuters) — A senior Chinese official on Tuesday (July 19) brushed off calls for a boycott of the Philippines after an international arbitration court ruled in Manila’s favour in its dispute with Beijing over the South China Sea.
China has angrily rejected the verdict by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague and the initial case as illegal and farcical. It has repeatedly said it will not change its approach or its sovereignty claims in the waterway.
But though there have been calls on the internet for boycotts of Philippine products, there has only been sporadic evidence of these calls being heeded. This also applies to calls for boycotts of U.S. companies, as China has repeatedly blamed the U.S. for stirring up the trouble in the waterway, and for pushing Manila’s case.
China’s Vice Minister of Commerce Gao Yan on Friday (July 15) told reporters, when asked if China would take retaliatory trade measures against the Philippines because of the ruling, that trade relations with Manila were developing smoothly.
“In the past year, the development of China’s trade relations with the Philippines overall has been smooth and stable. China is willing to develop mutually beneficial and diverse trade relations with the Philippines. I should say that although some internet users have called for boycotts on products from the Philippines, in actuality this situation has not occurred,” she said.
Calls for boycotts of countries deemed to have offended China are not uncommon.
Disputes with Japan over the country’s painful shared history and contested ownership of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea have in recent years bubbled over into anti-Japanese violence, and destruction of Japanese goods and restaurants.
There has been no evidence of such widespread anger in China this time, though a few reports have surfaced of people in generally third tier cities holding up banners in front of U.S. fast food restaurants like KFC asking people not to eat there.
The government also appears to have no intention of allowing protests, as it has done in the past against Japan.
On Monday (July 18) police in Siyang in the eastern province of Jiangsu said on their microblog they were aware of calls for protests against KFC but that these needed approval. One Beijing-based security source said calls for boycotts and protests in China were “naive and laughable”.