A Hong Kong-based food and beverage enterprise, Hung Fook Tong, has been facing a boycott in the Chinese mainland since Monday. The company sparked widespread outrage from netizens over its statement claiming one of its employees' pro-police views were "inappropriate."
This Global Times found on Tuesday that Hung Fook Tong products have already been removed from China's major e-commerce platforms, including Alibaba's Tmall and JD.com.
A picture of a female employee of Hung Fook Tong exclaiming support for police of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has been circulating online since Sunday afternoon, which drew abuse from radicals, local news site takungpao.com reported on Tuesday.
Instead of protecting its employee, Hung Fook Tong immediately drew a line on its Facebook account, by saying the employee's pro-police speech during work constituted the expression of "inappropriate" personal views, and the company would follow up the event seriously.
Netizens on social media platform Weibo said what was really "inappropriate" is Hung Fook Tong's statement, calling for a boycott.
Some people just do not learn, and if the company wants to join Taipan and give up the mainland market, we should help them, some netizens said.
Hong Kong-based Taipan Bread &Cakes has been facing its own boycott in the Chinese mainland for over a week, with its featured product snowy mooncakes almost disappearing within a couple of days–right before Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival when mooncakes are traditional snacks. A distributor in Beijing confirmed with the Global Times earlier that all Taipan-related products have been removed from its shelves.
Taipan's awkward situation was not only in the Chinese mainland. A post on Monday in a Hong Kong-based store read, "Just pay HK$99 ($12.60) to redeem a box of Taipan snowy mooncakes worth of HK$199, if you buy any product worth over HK$238."
Several netizens said that the continuous riots in Hong Kong have cleared out some entities, including financial firms and commercial institutions, which support Hong Kong secessionist forces while coveting the Chinese mainland market.
According to Hung Fook Tong's financial report for the first half of the year, the company has 76 distributors in the Chinese mainland, covering 20 provinces and 47 cities. It also cooperates with about 30 e-commerce platforms, and its new factory which is located in Kaiping, South China's Guangdong Province, started production in the second quarter of this year.
