Yanai said in BBC interview published this week that Uniqlo doesn’t source cotton from that region of China’s far west, where the US has restricted trade on concerns over human rights.
Fast Retailing, owner of the Uniqlo apparel chain, is closely monitoring to see if Chinese demand for its products is affected by chairman Tadashi Yanai’s reported comment that the company isn’t using cotton from Xinjiang.
Yanai’s remark has become a popular topic of discussion on Chinese social networking sites and Yamaguchi-based Fast Retailing is “watching the situation carefully”, including the possibility that Chinese consumers will boycott Uniqlo products in protest, spokesperson Seikei Itoh told Bloomberg News by phone on Saturday.
