Chinese customers and netizens’ anger continued to boil up after a Sam’s Club executive in China claimed that the business did not deliberately remove goods sourced from Xinjiang region.
A Sam’s Club representative surnamed Zhang told analysts in a call organized by a domestic securities firm last week that Chinese consumers failed to find products from Xinjiang because the app does not support searches for products based on geographic origin, Reuters reported.
“This matter is a misunderstanding,” Zhang said.
In response to a wave of membership cancellations occurring in multiple Chinese cities, Zhang said that Sam’s Club, which has 4.4 million members in China, saw around 500 shoppers cancel their membership cards in its central region.
“It has negative impact on our membership base, but time will prove everything in the future,” he said. “We think the potential in China is huge.”
Zhang’s words were immediately slapped down by Chinese netizens.
“I was in the membership card refund line and there were at least one hundred people,” commented one netizen using the handle ‘nanfangxiaoxiaoshaonian’.
“No more visit to Walmart and Sam’s Club, starting from me,” said another netizen calling themselves ‘yunzhongmanbu’.
“Then put all the Xinjiang products back on shelves to prove yourself. Don’t say you are not able to source them as an excuse,” said another netizen named laobachangshou.
During a visit to a Sam’s outlet in Shanghai last week, a Global Times reporter found no products were being sold that were produced in Xinjiang.
In particular, neither cantaloupes or grapes, popular Xinjiang specialties, were being sold.
An employee at the store told the Global Times that it used to sell Xinjiang cantaloupes, but doesn’t sell them now. She said she was not sure about the reason.
Top: A logo of Sam’s Club in Beijing Photo: VCG
