The world’s largest luxury goods group cannot be classified among China’s “useful idiots.” Yet, it subtly supports Xi Jinping’s regime.
by Christophe Stener
LVMH, chaired and largely (48 %) owned by French tycoon Bernard Arnault, is the world’s leading luxury goods group. 2023 was the “new record year for LVMH” with €86.2 billion revenue and €22.8 billion profit. Revenue in China is included by corporate communication in the “Rest of Asia,” worth 33 % of the total business. Accordingly to “Les Echos,” China was in 2023 the largest market for LVMH, above the USA.
It is no surprise that a form of “business realpolitik” drives the world’s largest luxury group’s relationship with China. “Paris is worth a Mass,” said Henri IV, a former Protestant who converted to Catholicism to get France’s crown, LVMH’s highly profitable business in China is worth supporting what the Uyghurs denounce as “genocide tourism” to Xinjiang.
Paris’ Jardin d’Acclimatation is a well-known leisure park that is owned by LVMH and located next to Louis Vuitton Foundation, the private modern art museum where a great Rothko exhibition is currently taking place.
It was announced that in the Jardin d’Acclimatation “the famous Dragons and Lanterns Festival from Shanghai is coming to Paris!” (December 2023 to February 2024).
Chine-info.com, China’s official communication service, claimed that this event celebrates the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and France and is part of the “2024 China-France Cultural Tourism Year.” This project has been celebrated at the China Cultural Center in Paris jointly by Hu Tingzhou, President of Yuyuan Inc., a subsidiary of Fosun, the largest private Chinese conglomerate, and by Marc-Antoine Jamet, LVMH Group’s General Secretary and Chairman of the Jardin d’Acclimatation, as well as by representatives of the Chinese Embassy, notably Yan Zhengquan, Cultural Counselor, and Liu Hongge, Director of the China Cultural Center in Paris.
Supporting China’s propaganda for so called “cultural trips” to Xinjiang, the Paris Dragon and Lanterns Festival shows large posters of monuments and landscapes of Xinjiang.
LVMH’s support to China’ soft power lobbying is not to be neglected considering the strength of LVMH, the attractiveness of its luxury goods, and the political influence of its billionaire owner Bernard Arnault through the newspapers he owns, notably “Les Echos” and “Le Parisien.”
Culture and politics are mixed in China’s communication lobbying. For example, the China Cultural Center in Paris promotes a book “60 Years of China-France Diplomatic Relations –A Marking Decade – For History, for Friendship, and to Lighten the Future” published by “Nouvelles d’Europe,” the self-proclaimed “Chinese most influential media in Europe.” It shows, on the cover page, President Macron shaking hands with President Xi. “A Marking Decade,” i.e., the time of Xi Jinping’s governance. Marking? Yes. Successful? It can be debated.
