Staten Island's sultry hip-hop group, the Wu-Tang Clan, has wreaked havoc on Sino-Canadian diplomatic relations.
Without even being directly involved in the affair.
It all started with an unusual story of T-shirts featuring the stylized W of the clan, which could, in certain aspects, recall the shape of a bat.
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Diplomatic crisis
The logo, usually represented with the name of the group in its center, was however hijacked by the Canadian embassy, which replaced it with the name of Wuhan, the city where the Covid-19 pandemic is said to have started.
The trouble is that since the beginning of January the images have been rolling on the social network Weibo, where many Chinese journalists and observers are crying out scandal: associating Wuhan and a bat, an animal suspected of being at the origin of the coronavirus pandemic , is not to the taste of the Chinese authorities.
"We are really shocked by this image, this logo, and called to account the Canadian representatives
, indignant the spokesman of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Wang Wenbin, Monday February 1st.
.
We want an investigation and a clear explanation.
The virus must not be linked to a region, country or animal while the investigation is still ongoing. "
On Tuesday, the Canadian Embassy in Beijing tried to explain.
“The logo of the t-shirt was created by a member of the Embassy with a customized W, it is not designed to represent a bat at all.
It was carried out only internally for the embassy team which dealt with the repatriations of Canadians residing in Wuhan at the very beginning of 2020
, explains the diplomatic representation.
We totally regret this misunderstanding. ”
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Based on these dates, Canada points out that at the time of the creation of this logo, the possibility of transmission via the intermediate horseshoe bat, the suspected bat species, had not yet been mentioned.
What to stop the Chinese scolding?
Not quite.
Since 2018, relations between Canada and China have suffered from a certain mistrust, after the Chinese government had two Canadians arrested for spying on its territory.
A crackdown carried out after the Canadian police arrested Meng Wanzhou, a senior finance official, accused of multiple frauds and conspiracies by the American government, in particular concerning its commercial relations with Iran.
The affair of the tampered with logo is therefore a new pass of arms, unusual this time, between the two States, initiated by a somewhat fussy China.
A shame, when we know that the Wu-Tang Clan has, precisely, built its identity around kung fu and wuxia, both from the old Middle Kingdom.