if anyone isn’t aware, 1989 was the year of the Tiananmen Square Protests & Massacre.

Also her initials, TS
She’s selling shirts that say TS 1989 on them in a country where anything related to that massacre is completely censored
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/07/22/taylor-swifts-next-feud-might-be-with-the-chinese-government/?wprss=rss_world

Someone in her PR team did not do their research.

Guys, I know it may seem easy to act like this is some intentional snub, but logically there’s really no one to be angry at, least of all Taylor Swift. Chinese Resellers are a massive, huge problem- they will throw literally anything on a shirt if they think it will sell. More likely than not, you’re either looking at stuff that was either:

A) Imported, actual Taylor Swift merchandise in real, legit stores selling designs that pertain to her album, which is titled ‘T.S. 1989′ and has nothing to do with the Tiananmen Square massacre, or,

B) Illegal, copied works from people in China who do this for a living for such companies as Ebay, Etsy, Alibaba, etc. who will hop onto anything remotely popular and try to sell it to a worldwide market online. This is a well documented and ongoing issue, I myself have had tons of shops in China take my designs and slap a mockup together and try to sell it, it’s just a part of making art on the internet in this day and age. 

If it is A, then the people in the Chinese department stores ordering and selling TSwift merch are the ones to ‘blame’, and we all know that China very actively wiped the Tianamen Square Massacre out of their History- the people running those department stores likely don’t even know it happened. 

The people selling her official merch to stores are not likely making the connection either, and know the initials stand for Taylor Swift. At worst, it’s a slight faux pas, but do you really expect no company on the face of the earth to ever sell anything with the initials T.S. to any stores in China?

If it is B, then obviously the culprits are Chinese and likely don’t know about the event, and in any case wouldn’t care, because they aren’t selling Tianamen Square merchandise, they’re selling Taylor Swift merchandise. There’s a lot of injustices in the world but this is really not something you should be wasting your anger on, and Taylor Swift has corporate deals with massive companies for her official merchandise, which is likely all handled by people other than her. 

I think a better use of that anger would being outraged that the Chinese Government censors their peoples’ version of History in a legitimate, totalitarian way of a massacre THEY committed against unarmed college students, rather than being upset at a girl who happens to have the same initials and birth year of the massacre and dares to have merchandise made for her latest, completely unrelated album.