In China’s tightly controlled internet space, the uncensored explosion of any topic must be seen as having the Communist Party’s acquiescence — if not outright backing. And so, the outpouring of online attacks directed at Western fashion brands caught up in the row over Xinjiang cotton has all the hallmarks of being official policy.

Mainland Chinese cyberspace has seen a wave of “patriotic” videos showing angry people confronting customers and shopkeepers in outlets of Western brands.

Mainland rappers made music videos to slam H&M, Nike and other brands for “earning Chinese people’s money while breaking Chinese people’s rice pots.” One of these songs won praise from the Communist Youth League, and has been viewed more than one million times on the popular video-sharing website Bilibili.

Other videos showed people across mainland China in more aggressive acts: staging protests outside outlets, pointing fingers at shopkeepers and shoving display items to the floor.

In one clip taken in a Chongqing outlet of H&M, a middle-aged man pointed his finger and shouted at a young woman who was trying on a pair of shoes. The man repeatedly told the woman not to buy them, denounced — in foul language — the Swedish brand as rubbish, and claimed that he was teaching others “how to be Chinese.” Another man, believed to be the one who filmed the event, was heard giving the response “well said” to the man’s remarks.

Another clip, uploaded onto the Twitter-like Sina Weibo microblog, showed a man being harassed by a woman who took the video, for apparently wearing Nike shoes and an Adidas backpack. The woman repeatedly asked the man to face her camera. She then swore at the man after he ignored her.

Last week, China’s state media stirred up sentiment against Western fashion brands after the European Union, the United States, Britain and Canada imposed sanctions on officials and an entity in Xinjiang over human rights abuses against Uyghurs, a largely Muslim ethnic group that were once the majority in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region.

Observers in Hong Kong and Taiwan have compared the mood in the mainland now to the xenophobic sentiments during the Boxer Uprising in 1900. Many foreign property, missionaries and Chinese Christians were targeted and killed during the insurrection.

Mainland authorities are also trying to promote the “patriotic” videos on platforms catering to international audiences. The Communist Youth League posted a music video, which ridicules the pronunciation of Nike, on the mainland-banned YouTube. As of Sunday, that video had about 500 views.

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