Starbuck qui a 261 magasins en Chine, est aussi installé dans la cité interdite. Déja en 2001 la multinationale du café a été obligé de retirer son enseigne après de nombreuses critiques sur le Web et maintenant c'est carrément sa présence à cet endroit qui est fortement contesté.
The current flap began last week, when a well-known anchorman on Chinese state TV, Rui Chenggang, posted an entry on his personal blog calling for Starbucks to be evicted from its corner of the Forbidden City. The coffee shop's presence "tramples on Chinese culture," he fulminated, and constitutes "an insult to Chinese civilization."
Since that post went up, Mr. Rui's site has registered more than half a million hits and collected thousands of messages of support for his position, the TV personality says.
One, signed Shi Ershao, gives a flavor of the bitter dregs the site serves to America's favorite coffee roaster: "What a humiliation for China," the message reads. "Once it was military invasion, now it is economic invasion. Why can't they just drink tea?"
Authorities in charge of the Forbidden City, home to 24 emperors over 500 years, originally allowed Starbucks to join other food concessions in 2000 to help finance an extensive renovation. Now palace curators also appear to be wondering whether the chain has overstayed its imperial welcome.
"The museum is working with Starbucks to find a solution by this June in response to the protests," the official Xinhua news agency quoted a museum spokesman as saying. "Whether or not Starbucks remains depends upon the entire design plan" that renovators are drawing up.
L'article complet du Christian Science Monitor.
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