{"id":14283,"date":"2025-08-18T12:02:37","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T12:02:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/08\/18\/swatch-pulls-slanted-eye-ad-after-chinese-social-media-uproar\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T12:02:38","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T12:02:38","slug":"swatch-pulls-slanted-eye-ad-after-chinese-social-media-uproar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/08\/18\/swatch-pulls-slanted-eye-ad-after-chinese-social-media-uproar\/","title":{"rendered":"Swatch pulls &#8220;slanted eye&#8221; ad after Chinese social media uproar"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article-0\">\n<section class=\"content__body\">\n<p>Swiss watchmaker Swatch has apologized and removed an ad featuring a model pulling the corners of his eyes after the image prompted accusations of racism and calls for a boycott on Chinese social media. <\/p>\n<p>Internet users slammed the &#8220;slanted eye&#8221; gesture made by the Asian male model as racist. <\/p>\n<p>In a post on Instagram and Chinese social media platform Weibo on Saturday, Swatch acknowledged the &#8220;recent concerns regarding the portrayal of a model&#8221; in the ad and said it had deleted the promotional material worldwide. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We sincerely apologize for any distress or misunderstanding this may have caused,&#8221; the company wrote. <\/p>\n<p>Many online weren&#8217;t content with the company&#8217;s response and continued to call for boycotting Swatch Group brands, which include Blancpain, Longines and Tissot. <\/p>\n<p>A user with more than one million followers on the giant Chinese social media site Weiblo accused Swatch of &#8220;racism against Chinese&#8221; and suggested the firm should be punished by regulators. <\/p>\n<p>Others accused Swatch of deliberate discrimination and urged consumers to boycott the company. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The brand&#8217;s image has collapsed. (Swatch) thinks they can just apologize and salvage everything? It&#8217;s not that simple,&#8221; another user wrote. <\/p>\n<p>China is one of Swatch Group&#8217;s biggest markets.  <\/p>\n<p>But along with many other Western luxury brands, the watchmaker has struggled to maintain growth as the world&#8217;s second largest economy has slowed and consumers have shifted to more affordable brands. <\/p>\n<p>In July, the group reported an 11.2 percent drop in net sales for the first six months of the year. <\/p>\n<p>It said the slump was &#8220;exclusively attributable&#8221; to sluggish demand in China.   <\/p>\n<p>Swatch isn&#8217;t the first foreign brand to face accusations of racist advertising in China. <\/p>\n<p>Italian luxury fashion brand Dolce &amp; Gabbana was heavily criticized in 2018 after it posted promotional videos showing a Chinese model awkwardly using chopsticks to eat Italian food. <\/p>\n<p>In 2023, French brand Dior also sparked uproar with an advertisement showing a model pulling up the corner of her eye.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>    <!-- data-recirc-source=\"queryly\" --><\/p>\n<aside class=\"component list recirculation component--type-recirculation \">\n        <\/aside>\n<p>    <!-- tags --><\/p>\n<\/section><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Swiss watchmaker Swatch has apologized and removed an ad featuring a model pulling the corners of his eyes after the image prompted accusations of racism and calls for a boycott on Chinese social media. Internet users slammed the &#8220;slanted eye&#8221; gesture made by the Asian male model as racist. In a post on Instagram and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14284,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14283","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14283"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14285,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14283\/revisions\/14285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}