Since July 29, the ACFTU's drive to set up union branches in Wal-Mart stores in China has snowballed rapidly, with a total of 17 union branches now having been formed in Wal-Mart stores in cities around the country...However, the company has publicly implied that some of its workers may have been bribed by the ACFTU into applying to set up union branches...While flatly rejecting this allegation, a spokesman for the Fujian ACFTU did not deny that...gifts had been given: their purpose, he said, had been merely "to help the workers through the current season of hot weather"...[O]n August 10, a senior Wal-Mart spokesman, Jonathan Dong, confirmed that the company had agreed to open up its China stores to the state-run union. "We're working now to achieve that goal," he said. Asked to explain why the company had made this concession when it refuses to allow a union presence in its stores in all other countries, Dong revealingly replied: "The union in China is fundamentally different from unions in the West…. The [ACFTU] has made it clear that its goal is to work with employers, not promote confrontation."...But regardless of whether or not the ACFTU's new union branches can actually deliver any tangible benefits for the Wal-Mart workforce in future, the fact that the company's worldwide "no unions" policy has now been breached clearly opens a hornet's nest for the company's operations elsewhere.