News analysis
China was French cosmetics company L‘Oréal’s second largest market in 2015. “In a country undergoing far-reaching and rapid change, L’Oréal is adapting and taking full advantage of the market’s transformations,” the company wrote in a financial report.
So when Global Times, the Chinese Communist Party’s provocative, nationalist tabloid, accused a popular Hong Kong singer and democracy supporter Denise Ho of advocating independence for the semi-autonomous regions of Hong Kong and Tibet, a company under L'Oréal, Lancôme, appeared to get the hint.
A called-off concert and a boycott later, L'Oréal’s shares took a nosedive—share prices had fallen by 2.068 percent at its steepest—and shows no sign of ceasing.
But L'Oréal could have avoided its current predicament had it known to ignore the egging of an aggressively patriotic, state-run rag.
How It Unraveled
Lancôme, an upscale perfume and cosmetics brand, canceled its June 19 concert in Hong Kong featuring Ho a day after the Global Times rant on June 4. In a terse statement on Facebook, the company cited “possible security reasons” for calling off the event. A version of the statement on Chinese social media was more forthcoming: “China’s Hong Kong region celebrity Denise Ho isn’t Lancôme’s spokesperson.”
That’s self-censorship, cried Ho, rights and democracy groups, and internet users in Hong Kong and China. “I am quite shocked that a global brand such as Lancôme … would succumb to the pressure from Chinese tabloid news or the Chinese market,” Ho said in a BBC interview.
