Now It's The Turn Of Mercedes-Benz To Grovel Before China, Over An Instagram Post Quoting The Dalai Lama
from the extremely-erroneous dept
A couple of weeks ago, Techdirt wrote about Marriott International kowtowing to China because of a drop-down menu that dared to suggest that Tibet might be a country. We noted that a newly-confident and increasingly aggressive China might well start finding more of these alleged "insults" to use as pretexts for asserting itself internationally. And sure enough, that's already happened again, this time with Mercedes-Benz. As a New York Times story explains, the German car maker posted an image of a white car parked on a beach, along with a quotation popularly ascribed to the Dalai Lama -- "Look at the situations from all angles, and you will become more open. #MondayMotivation" -- to its official Instagram account.
Becoming "more open" by looking at things from this particular angle didn't go down at all well in China, where the authorities regard Tibetan veneration of the Dalai Lama as a threat to political stability in the region. According to the New York Times, the post provoked an "outcry" from Chinese internet users, many of whom pledged to boycott the Mercedes brand. It's hard to gauge to what extent Chinese citizens did this spontaneously, or whether some of those protesting online were part of the authorities' well-oiled Internet surveillance and propaganda machine. In any case, what mattered was that the Chinese government was not happy at all, and Mercedes-Benz realized that if it wanted to carry on selling its cars in China, it had better start apologizing quickly and deeply. This it did by posting to its official Weibo account, translated here by the Shanghaiist:
This morning, we noticed that our company's international social media had posted an extremely erroneous message. For this, we sincerely apologize.
Although we deleted the post as soon as possible, we fully understand how it has hurt the feelings of people in this country, including our colleagues who work in the country. For this, we express our sincerest apologies.
The Chinese government evidently wanted to make the most of this new opportunity to humiliate a Western company. The People’s Daily, the ruling Communist Party's official newspaper, went so far as to berate Mercedes-Benz thus in a headline (original in Chinese):
If you do like this, you are an enemy of the Chinese people!
What makes the situation even more absurd is that Instagram is blocked in China, and so in theory nobody in the country could even see the ad. As with the Marriott International story, it underlines that the Chinese government now believes it has a right to dictate what should happen outside its borders, as well as within them.
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Filed Under: china, dalia lama, free speech
Companies: instagram, marriott, mercedes-benz
Reader Comments
The First Word
“Yep, everything looks good and honest from here, boss. You keep on making your president a dictator for life and all that jazz.
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Yep, everything looks good and honest from here, boss. You keep on making your president a dictator for life and all that jazz.
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Re: Re: Red Boots!
Nice reference to The Good Place! If anything, my esteem for their leader will go up if they wear this pair of red boots.
https://tenor.com/view/red-boots-were-going-to-crash-panic-nervous-william-jackson-harper-gif -10610369
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And it's working out for them so far.
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business line right the fuck up to kiss China government ass!
all the fucking money!
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After Being The Butt Of Western Jokes For Centuries ...
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Mercedes and Instagram Post surprise Mercedes :)
Post post surprise Mercedes beauti beauti:))
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Apparently in China, enemy-shaming is the new fad.
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All Human Culture does it... ALL!
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sexual
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Golly gee, Techdirt. I'm really confused as to how the Chinese picked up the idea of meddling into the affairs of others because of business.
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China and Mercedes officially hate looking at anything from more than one angle. That's probably an obvious thing with most governments and corporations, but good to hear it openly admitted.
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Bad example
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Re: Bad example
Every gen has to put up with this sort of hypocrisy from those in authority - in many different forms. The war on drugs has stretched over the last few generations, and doesn't look to be ending anytime soon.
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@China: fuk off
@US: keep teaching other countries not to respect their borders, it won't backfire, no. /s
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backbone/spine?
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Don't want them to throw a tantrum now.
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Now they lose sales everywhere else...
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Shouldn't Mercedes know better?
Mercedes-Benz is a huge multi-national corporation which I assume has legal departments that are well-versed in protocol and international cultures.
So why did anyone think it was a good idea to run an ad with a quote from the Dalai Lama? Did they not know or not understand that it could offend people in China and that those same people could be customers?
Or if we're cynical: did they do something to offend Chinese people, but they did it on Instagram because it's blocked in China, for the simple reason that it gets more attention. Look- we're now even talking about the story!
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I would wager 99% was the later. From my time living in China, I can say with some degree of certainty that the average person doesn't give a flip about the Dalai Lama or would even know that quote was attributed to him.
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The flexibility of "hateful"
The Chinese Government’sAHEM People’s Daily also makes this interesting comment:
This is an obvious lesson in how flexible the definition of “hate speech” is in the hands of clever propagandists. Even an uncited quote encouraging broad-mindedness can be spun as hateful, given enough Orwellian oomph.
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Nothing but sabre rattling.
I don't think the Chinese government would be so dumb as to stop letting their people buy these cars, I'm sure they make a fortune on sales tax. Nothing will come from this, they're just getting pissy about Tibet like they always do.
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Mercedes ?
Extremely ridiculous...
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