June 17, 2025

Made in China: The crisis targeting luxury brands

By The Bodyguard Team

In recent months, a wave of hateful messages targeting luxury brands has flooded social media. The trigger? A narrative centered around "Made in China" manufacturing claims. Rooted in misinformation and amplified by emotion, this backlash escalated into a full-blown reputational crisis for some of the world’s most prestigious fashion brands.

Bodyguard's analysis of over 40,900 messages across TikTok, Instagram and Facebook between April 7 and May 16 2025 reveals a clear and alarming pattern: luxury brands were caught in the crossfire of a global misinformation campaign that spread quickly, generated high volumes of toxicity and exposed serious blind spots in traditional moderation strategies.

Behind the hate: behavior insights

A narrative turned hostile

The most iconic luxury brands saw their names associated with accusations of outsourcing to China, often framed in derogatory or xenophobic terms. Over 57% of all messages analyzed were classified as hateful, while just 1.81% were classified as positive. The dominant terms used? “Made,” “China,” and “Chinese” in English, and “chino(s)” and “hecho” in Spanish (languages that made up over 93% of the total conversation).

TikTok: the crisis amplifier

The platform breakdown is telling: 73.7% of all messages were published on TikTok, highlighting its power as a crisis accelerant. Content surfaced quickly, gained traction through trends and duets, and didn't leave much room for brands to respond before reputational damage was done.

The faces behind the fury

Contrary to expectations, most hateful posts didn’t come from new bot accounts. While 92.7% of messages originated from accounts less than 30 days old, older accounts were responsible for the highest proportion of hate. A small but vocal group, just 10% of problematic authors, accounted for over 20% of harmful content, with repeat offenders posting more than 20 hateful messages each.

Escalation, not anomaly

This wasn’t a one-off: the hate escalated fast. In just a few days, hateful “Made in China” messages spiked by 6.4x, peaking between April 16–18, when they made up 90% of all hateful content targeting luxury brands. This crisis represented 81.87% of all hate directed at luxury brands during the period (clearly industry-wide, not brand-specific).

A learning moment and a reminder of what’s at stake

Our analysis of the "Made in China" narrative wasn’t just a reputational attack; it was a real-time stress test for the luxury sector and a powerful learning moment for Bodyguard.

As the situation evolved, the overwhelming majority of content was ultimately recognized as hateful, helping brands understand both the scale and nature of the threat that they were facing.

What this crisis proved is the importance of early detection, precise classification and real-time response. When harmful narratives spread rapidly across platforms like TikTok, time is everything for the brands affected. The faster they can identify coordinated attacks, flag high-risk messages and understand where and how hate is being amplified, the better they can protect their image and audience.

With Bodyguard, luxury brands are equipped not just to moderate, but to monitor, anticipate and act when a crisis strikes.

How Bodyguard can help

Crises like this expose the limitations of traditional moderation systems. At Bodyguard, our AI-powered social media protection goes beyond keyword detection. We continuously train our models to recognize evolving narratives, including those rooted in misinformation or xenophobic discourse.

With our technology, luxury brands can:

Detect emerging harmful narratives before they go viral
Flag and remove hate in real-time, at scale
Understand the root causes and behavior patterns behind attacks
Protect their brand image and online communities proactively

Luxury is built on trust. Don’t let misinformation erode it. Book a demo with Bodyguard and discover how we help luxury brands stay one step ahead of digital threats.