Goodness Me - China Media Project
chinamediaproject.org
Good Me, one of China’s largest tea store chains, had a hard lesson in public relations this week after internet users decided its punchline video about workplace discipline was not funny, not at all.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/3170974

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On Wednesday last week, one of China’s largest tea chains found itself at the center of an online storm after a video emerged of employees for the company apparently wearing cardboard signs and makeshift cardboard handcuffs to enforce workplace discipline — public displays of shame that had disturbing echoes of the country’s political past.

The offending post, made on September 17 to the official Douyin and Xiaohongshu accounts of the Guangdong operations of Good Me (古茗茶饮) — a tea chain with more than 5,000 locations across the country — showed several employees on site at a Good Me shop standing with their heads cast down, their hands bound in front with what appeared to be cardboard cup holders. Handwritten signs around their necks read: “The crime of forgetting to include a straw”; and “The crime of knocking over the teapot.”

[…]

For China’s media and internet authorities, the Cultural Revolution is generally not a subject to be talked about at all. And for many Chinese who remember the period, which was ended by the ouster and arrest in October 1976 of the so-called Gang of Four, it remains a silent source of pain and fear.

[…]

Most comments on the video on both platforms expressed shock and ridicule at what seemed to be extremely unfair and inhumane treatment of employees on the one hand, and an acute lack of good taste on the other. By Wednesday the video had been removed and Good Me was scrambling to contain the damage.

[…]

  • Aatube
    -3•2 months ago

    I don’t sympathize with their current leadership, but social credit never was really a thing. Zhima Credit was indeed a big thing, but it was banking credit and quite frequently got conflated with these voluntary systems. I was in school in Hangzhou—one of the biggest trials according to the article—for four years until mid 2022, and I didn’t think it was a thing because it was too small to be noticed or talked about in class.

    Participation is fully voluntary and there are no enticement beyond losing access to minor rewards. For fear of overreach and pushback, the Chinese central government banned punishments for low scores and minor offences.[15] During the city trials, pilot programs only saw limited participation.[20] Many people living in pilot program cities are unaware of the programs.[20] In Xiamen, 210,059 users activated their social credit account, roughly 5 percent of the population of Xiamen; 60,000 or 1.5 percent of population in Wuhu participated the system; Hangzhou has 1,872,316 (15 percent) participants and fewer regularly use the system.

    And no, bank credit is not the same thing at all. That’s just your average American credit score but embedded in a monolith.

      • Aatube
        -3•2 months ago

        That’s just a fraud offender registry, which I have listed as one of the only forms of kind of–public shaming. It’s not been shut down as part of the social credit shutdowns and only financial stuff can put you there.

        • Flying SquidMEnglish
          4•2 months ago

          Ah yes, not being allowed to ride a train. A standard punishment for financial fraud.

          • Aatube
            -4•2 months ago

            Like I said, it’s kind of public shaming indeed. I’m not sure how to feel about it.

            • Flying SquidMEnglish
              2•2 months ago

              Because everyone knows you can’t ride the train? How?

                • Flying SquidMEnglish
                  -1•2 months ago

                  You said being barred from riding trains is public shaming. I’m asking how that is public shaming. How does the public know about it?

                  • Aatube
                    -1•2 months ago

                    I was sort of thinking more about the effects: it’s a punishment that only causes kind of–petty discomfort. I’d agree that it’s not really public shaming, hence there’s not really any judicial public shaming in China anymore.

      • Aatube
        1•2 months ago

        it’s on Wikipedia and backed up by reliable sources