China’s e-commerce platforms are spearheading an anti-Lotte campaign amid Sino-Korean tensions over US-backed THAAD system Lotte, the Japanese-Korean conglomerate with businesses from confectionery to malls, has found itself in the cross hairs of China’s nationalist mobs last week as online shoppers and internet trolls launched a boycott of the brand for allowing a US missile defence system to be placed on a plot of Lotte land in South Korea. Responding to the coordinated boycott, some brick-and-mortar retailers and online shopping platforms have removed everything under the Lotte brand – from cosmetics to candies – from their physical and digital shelves.