Chinese company apologizes for racist ad

A Chinese company accused of racism by a controversial ad in which a black actor out of a washing machine as an attractive young Asian apologized on Sunday (29) for the damage caused.

"We apologize for the damage caused to Africans with the dissemination of advertising and overexposure of the subject in the media," the company said in a statement released by the official Chinese social network.

"We regret that advertising has caused so much controversy," he added.

The company said in a statement sent on Saturday night that stopped transmitting this announcement. She had rejected the criticism on Friday, arguing that foreign media are "very susceptible".

"We wanted only promote our product. The foreign media may be very susceptible," said a spokesman of the cosmetics group Shanghai Leishang, quoted by the official newspaper Global Times.

This ad for Qiaobi detergent brand, released in recent days on the Internet, shows a muscular black man with a stained white shirt of ink approaches a young Chinese woman who is washing clothes.

The girl put in the man's mouth a dose of detergent before putting it to strength in the washing machine. Moments later, an Asian young man with a pristine white shirt out of the washing machine and let the girl fascinated.

Advertising, which viralizou quickly set off a wave of protests in the US intelligence websites that criticized the prejudice and discrimination that black people suffer in China.

Leishang, which sells detergent, did not respond to AFP.

The announcement was recorded in early 2016, but was used a reduced version "where (actor) black did not appear. We do not understand how the full version was suddenly released on the Internet," said the spokesman, according to the Global Times.

The images did not cause the same outrage in China, although after the international controversy some netizens have expressed their discontent in microblogging platform Weibo.

The traditional preference in China by white-skinned people, which is a traditional beauty criterion, by the small ethnic diversity in the media, contribute to a certain rejection in relation to black people.

The increase in trade relations with Africa contributed to a greater presence of the expatriate population of African origin in China, especially in Guangzhou (south).