What's happened to Versace happens once a year to a company. It happened to D&G at the end of last year.
It's not necessarily triggered by the government. Chinese are very patriotic, if not nationalistic, and the power of social media does the rest.
In this case Versace have only themselves to blame: T-shirts "Milan-Italy", "London-UK", etc. then "Hong Kong-Hong Kong" especially at this time, was incredibly stupid though probably not malicious.
Oh, it's even worse than that, they even have "Macau-Macao". Not only did they not know that Macau is a part of China, but they could not even spell "Macao" properly!
From this, I would not even say it's due to stupidity, but more incompetence. If you are in a business and not know about one of your biggest markets, then you are doing something very very wrong!
How did they misspell Macau/Macao? I lived there for 7 years, and at first I thought Macao was the Portuguese spelling due to the -ao ending. It's more complicated than that when you start to research the two spellings.
Believe me I went through that explanation, and a few others in deep conversation with my Portuguese and Macanese friends as well as with a Matteo Ricci scholar. It seems there was an old Portuguese spelling Macao, and there is Macáu with the accent also from eighteenth or nineteenth century Portuguese. In Cantonese it is called Àomén
1) We knew that all mainland China state-owned enterprises are essentially owned by the China Communist Party. We also had indications private enterprises (such as certain phone manufacturers) are in the same situation. Now it's becoming clear the Commies' grip extends to private enterprises in Hong Kong.
2) Regarding scoundreller's comment below - everyone is expendable except the Party.
But aside from that, protests in the airport just shut down all outbound flights from HKG for the remainder of Monday (from 4pm onwards). This is getting worse.
Cathay Pacific is really at the nexus of Hong Kong's history and the British empire.
It was setup by an Australian and an American. Its top management is mostly Western. Its largest shareholder is an old British company that expanded in China in the 19th century, thanks to the British Empire, its 2nd largest shareholder is Air China (China's national carrier).
This 'crackdown' may be a visible manifestation of a culture clash.
New to Hacker News - anyone know why the other thread about the Hong Kong protests (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20673676) disappeared from the front page? It has >100 comments/upvotes and was posted 2 hours ago.
It's breaking news politics which in most cases is off topic. CNN currently reports it on their front page. Earthquakes, mass shootings, famous person going to jail are other examples. In generic news they are relevant, HN has a different focus (https://news.ycombinator.com/best). HN users flag the story as off topic so it looses ranking. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 46.5 ms ] threadIt's not necessarily triggered by the government. Chinese are very patriotic, if not nationalistic, and the power of social media does the rest.
In this case Versace have only themselves to blame: T-shirts "Milan-Italy", "London-UK", etc. then "Hong Kong-Hong Kong" especially at this time, was incredibly stupid though probably not malicious.
I can relate.
I have seen people who are very critical of the government but at the same time circulate anti-West materials all the time.
From this, I would not even say it's due to stupidity, but more incompetence. If you are in a business and not know about one of your biggest markets, then you are doing something very very wrong!
For Portuguese you are probavly confusing it with the -ão ending. The tilde makes a difference.
For example: - pão / pau - mão / mau
2) Regarding scoundreller's comment below - everyone is expendable except the Party.
But aside from that, protests in the airport just shut down all outbound flights from HKG for the remainder of Monday (from 4pm onwards). This is getting worse.
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3022437...
It was setup by an Australian and an American. Its top management is mostly Western. Its largest shareholder is an old British company that expanded in China in the 19th century, thanks to the British Empire, its 2nd largest shareholder is Air China (China's national carrier).
This 'crackdown' may be a visible manifestation of a culture clash.