The world’s second-largest retailer after Wal-Mart, France’s Carrefour operates thousands of stores around the world. The company is unable to build new stores in its homeland due to regulations protecting smaller stores, so Carrefour has been expanding through acquisitions at home and abroad. The French retail behemoth is particularly focused on China, where it is the country’s largest foreign retailer, with about 90 “hypermarkets” in 20-plus cities.
In December there were protests in China over the fact that French president Sarkozy met with the Dalai Lama. This is the latest in tensions between France and China over Tibet. As reported by the UK’s The Guardian, in April 2008 Nationalist protests against Carrefour spread across China, with thousands demonstrating outside stores over the west’s stance on Tibet. Carrefour appeared to be taking the blame for France as a whole after a protester in Paris tried to snatch the Olympic flame from a paralympian during the relay, and because of a rumor that the supermarket had donated money to the Dalai Lama. Carrefour says it has never given money to any political or religious cause.
Carrefour has established solid Corporate Social Responsibility Policies including a comprehensive “Charter for Commitment to Protect Human Rights.” The company is in a tricky situation. On the one hand, its continuing growth in China is key to its growth and financial success, and on the other hand the company is indirectly participating in one of the greatest human rights travesties of all time: the gradual and violent eradication of Tibetan culture by the Chinese. Surely this is at odds with the company’s commitment to protect human rights.
What do you think?
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