Japan’s Uniqlo CEO Tadashi Yanai says won’t get sucked into US-China rivalry

In comments to Nikkei newspaper, Japan’s richest man said economic relations between Washington and Beijing remained strong despite growing power competition

Yanai has not commented on whether Uniqlo uses cotton sourced from Xinjiang amid US allegations of forced labour in China’s westernmost region

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Fast Retailing’s CEO Tadashi Yanai. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 6:00pm, 30 Dec 2021

Japan’s richest man and founder of clothing retail giant Uniqlo has indicated he will not change his firm’s business operations in China even as Tokyo gets caught up in growing rivalry between Washington and Beijing, pointing to how Japanese firms have “no choice but to make money in markets across the world”.

Asked for his take on US-China tensions, Tadashi Yanai, CEO of Uniqlo’s parent Fast Retailing, told Japan’s Nikkei newspaper that despite fractious relations across trade to security, economic links between the two superpowers remained strong.

“Look at the reality,” he told the Nikkei. “The US and China may appear to be at odds, but they actually are not. American financial capital is flowing into Chinese investments. Apple products are all made in China. Chinese exports to the US have been rising. Economically, things are going well between the US and China.”

Washington is attempting to exert trade pressure on China for similar reasons that saw Japanese imports being condemned in the US in the 1980s, Yanai suggested. Japan’s growing trade surplus with the US prompted a series of anti-dumping measures against Japanese products, forcing Tokyo to impose export controls and expand its imports.

Quizzed on why he has refused to comment on whether Uniqlo uses cotton sourced from Xinjiang, which has been the focus of allegations of human rights abuses by the Chinese government, Yanai said: “I want to be neutral between the US and China.”