Former NBA star Dwight Howard stirs Chinese anger by calling Taiwan a country
- American basketball star triggers wave of criticism on Chinese social media after comment in promotional video with Taiwan’s vice-president
- William Lai also refers to Taiwan as a ‘free country’ as backlash quickly builds on Weibo following release of video
Former National Basketball Association (NBA) star Dwight Howard has triggered a wave of criticism on Chinese social media for calling Taiwan a country in a promotional video with Taiwan’s vice-president.
The video, released on Wednesday, showed the US basketball player supporting a campaign for a select number of foreign tourists to spend a night in Taiwan’s presidential office building.
“Hello everyone, I’m Dwight Howard, and since I have come to Taiwan I have gained a whole new appreciation of this country,” Howard said in the video.
China claims sovereignty over self-ruled Taiwan and says the island is not a separate country but part of “one China” governed by Beijing. China says it will never renounce the use of force to enforce its claims.
China’s insistence that Taiwan is not a country means that the island is excluded from many international organisations and its athletes compete in international tournaments under the banner “Chinese Taipei”.
It did not take long for a backlash to build following the release of the video. The hashtag #HowardTaiwanindependence went viral on China’s Weibo social media platform, earning almost 400 million hits by Friday.