About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 26, 2018)
WORLD The Times, Gainesville, Georgia | gainesvilletimes.com Monday, November 26, 2018 7A EU seals Brexit deal as May faces hard sell at home ALASTAIR GRANT I Associated Press British Prime Minister Theresa May walks past the EU flag at the conclusion of an EU summit in Brussels, Sunday, Nov. 25. BY LORNE COOK, JILL LAWLESS AND RAF CASERT Associated Press BRUSSELS — After months of hesitation, stop-and-start negotia tions and resignations, Britain and the European Union on Sunday finally sealed an agreement gov erning the U.K.’s departure from the bloc next year. So much for the easy part. British Prime Minister Theresa May must now sell the deal to her divided Parliament — a huge task considering the intense opposi tion from pro-Brexit and pro-EU lawmakers alike — to ensure Brit ain can leave with a minimum of upheaval on March 29. It’s a hard sell. The agreement leaves Britain outside the EU with no say but still subject to its rules and the obligations of membership at least until the end of 2020, pos sibly longer. Britons voted to leave in June 2016, largely over concerns about immigration and losing sov ereignty to Brussels. EU leaders were quick to warn that no better offer is available. “I am totally convinced this is the only deal possible,” European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said. “Those who think that by rejecting the deal that they would have a better deal will be disappointed the first seconds after the rejection.” For once, May was in complete agreement. “This is the deal that is on the table,” she said. “It is the best pos sible deal. It is the only deal.” Acknowledging the vast politi cal and economic consequences of Brexit, May promised lawmakers their say before Christmas and said that it “will be one of the most sig nificant votes that Parliament has held for many years.” She argued that Parliament has a duty “to deliver Brexit” as voters have demanded. “The British people don’t want to spend any more time arguing about Brexit,” she said. “They want a good deal done that fulfils the vote and allows us to come together again as a country.” Not all agree. Main opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Cor- byn called the deal “the result of a miserable failure of negotiation that leaves us with the worst of all worlds,” and said his party would oppose it. Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, whose Scottish National Party is the third-largest in Parliament, said lawmakers “should reject it and back a better alternative.” Pro-Brexit former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith said May should insist on new terms because the deal “has ceded too much con trol” to Brussels. On the EU side, the last big obsta cle to a deal with Britain was over come Saturday when Spain lifted its objections over the disputed British territory of Gibraltar. So it took EU leaders only a matter of minutes at Sunday’s summit in Brussels to endorse the withdrawal agreement that settles Britain’s divorce bill, protects the rights of U.K. and EU citizens hit by Brexit and keeps the Irish border open. They also backed a 26-page document laying out their aims for relations after Brexit. Still, the event was tinged with sadness on the European side at Britain’s departure, the first time a country will leave the 28-nation bloc. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her feelings were “ambivalent, with sadness, but on the other hand, also some kind of relief that we made it to this point.” “I think we managed to make a diplomatic piece of art,” she said. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the deal — the product of a year and a half of often- gruel ing negotiations — was regrettable but acceptable. “I believe that nobody is win ning. We are all losing because of the U.K. leaving,” Rutte said. “But given that context, this is a bal anced outcome with no political winners.” May said she wasn’t sad, because Britain and the EU would remain “friends and neighbors.” “I recognize some European leaders are sad at this moment, but also some people back at home in the U.K. will be sad at this moment,” she told reporters, but insisted that she was “full of opti mism” about Britain’s future. The European Parliament, meanwhile, will be in full cam paign mode a few months ahead of the EU elections when Europe’s lawmakers sit to endorse the agree ment, probably in February, but perhaps as late as March, accord ing to the assembly’s president, Antonio Tajani. Still, Tajani said a “large major ity” of European parliamentarians support the deal. Dolce&Gabbana trip up in China riling millions of internet users BY KEN M0RITSUGU AND COLLEEN BARRY Associated Press BEIJING — Don’t mess with China and its growing cadre of powerful luxury consumers. That’s the lesson Dolce&Gabbana learned the hard way when it faced a boycott after Chinese neti- zens expressed outrage over what were seen as culturally insensitive videos promot ing a major runway show in Shanghai and subsequent posts of insulting comments in a private Instagram chat. The company blamed hackers for the anti-Chinese insults, but the explana tion felt flat to many and the damage was done. The Milan designers canceled the Shanghai runway show, meant as a tribute to China, as their guest list of Asian A-listers quickly joined the protests. Then, as retailers pulled their merchandise from shelves and powerful e-commerce sites deleted their wares, co-founders Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana went on camera — dwarfed against the larger backdrop of an ornate red wall-covering — to apologize to the Chinese people. “We will never forget this experience, and it will defi nitely never happen again,” a solemn-looking Gabbana said in a video statement posted Friday on social media. The apology video, and the sharp public backlash that demanded it, shows the importance of the Chinese market and the risks of oper ating in it. More broadly, it highlights the huge and still-growing influence of China, a country that can not be ignored as it expands economically, militarily and diplomatically. These trends are inter twined in frequent outbursts of nationalist sentiment among consumers who feel slighted by foreign brands or their governments. It’s not the first time a company has apologized, and it surely won’t be the last. Mercedes- Benz did so in February for featuring a quote by the Dalai Lama on its Instagram account. For Dolce&Gabbana, it could be mark the end of its growth in China, a mar ket critical to global luxury brands that it has cultivated since opening its first store in 2005 and where it now has 44 boutiques. “I think it is going to be impossible over the next cou ple of years for them to work in China,” said Cary Cooper, a professor of organizational psychology and health at Manchester University in England. “When you break this kind of cultural codes, then you are in trouble. The brand is now damaged in China, and I think it will be damaged in China until there is lost memory about it.” That could shake Dolce&Gabbana’s financial health. The privately held company does not release its individual sales figures. But Chinese consumers are responsible for a third of all luxury spending around the globe, according to a recent study by Bain consultancy. That will grow to 46 percent of forecast sales of an esti mated 365 billion euros ($412 billion) by 2025, fueled by millennials and the younger Generation Z set, who will make a growing percentage of their purchases online. “Without China, the hin terland for growth, D&G will obviously be in a weak com petitive position and in dan ger of being eliminated,” the Chinese business magazine New Fortune said in a social media post Sunday. “This is one of the major reasons why D&G finally lowered its head. They really cannot survive without the Chinese market.” While Dolce&Gabbana has displayed a knack for social media engagement, inviting millennial influenc es with millions of collec tive followers to sit in their front rows or walk in their NG HAN GUAN I Associated Press A man walks past a Dolce&Gabbana store in Beijing, China, Nov. 21. Dolce&Gabbana faced a boycott after Chinese netizens expressed outrage over what were seen as culturally insensitive videos promoting a major runway show in Shanghai and subsequent posts of insulting comments in a private Instagram chat. shows, that engagement has been a double-edged sword. Pop idol Karry Wang, who has drawn hundreds of screaming Chinese fans to the designer’s Milan show room for season runway shows, was one of the first to disavow the brand, saying he was ending his role as Asia- Pacific brand ambassador. Dolce found himself on the defensive several years ago after Elton John lashed out for comments that sug gested he did not support gay couples using surrogate mothers to have children. At the time, more than 67,000 tweets urged #boycottdol- cegabbana, while Courtney Love vowed to burn her Dolce&Gabbana garb and Martina Navritalova pledged to trash her D&G shirts. Gabbana, who has 1.6 million Instagram follow ers, faced a more contained backlash earlier this year when he responded to a col lage of Selena Gomez photos on Instagram with the com ment, “She’s really ugly.” Zhang and other celeb rities took to social media Wednesday to blast Dolce&Gabbana and said they would boycott the show, which was canceled. By Thursday, the company’s goods had disappeared from Little & Davenport Funeral Home To inquire about pricing packages available to memorialize a pet in print, please contact Megan Lewis at 770-535-6371 or mlewis@gainesvilletimes.com Pets at Peace will appear in The Times the last Sunday of each month. major e-commerce websites. The prevailing sentiment was captured by an airport duty-free shop that posted a photo of its shelves emptied of D&G products: “We have to show our stance. We are proud to be Chinese.” The rapid escalation into a public relations disas ter was fueled by social media. Individuals posted videos of themselves cut ting up or burning their Dolce&Gabbana clothes, or picking them up with chop sticks and putting them in the trash. A parody of the offend ing Dolce&Gabbana videos, which featured a Chinese woman using chopsticks to eat pizza and an oversized cannoli, shows a white man trying to eat Chinese food with a fork and knife. At least three rap bands took up the cause with new songs. “Companies that don’t respect us don’t deserve our respect,” Wang Zixin, team leader of CD Rev, a national ist rap band, said by phone from Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province. Its new song had been viewed more than 850,000 times on Weibo. “We hope people will remember companies that have ever insulted China, and not forget about them when the fallout passes,” Wang said. That sense of pride reflects a nationalism that has been encouraged by the government, often in dis putes China has with other countries over other foreign products. Sales by Japanese auto makers plunged in 2012 amid tensions between islands both countries claim in the East China Sea. The clash also illustrated the complexity of Chinese senti ment: Industry analysts said buyers didn’t want to be seen in Japanese auto showrooms but went ahead with planned purchases once tensions had passed. 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