‘Insincere’: Beijing rejects second apology from Swedish show over Chinese tourist ‘poop’ jokes

China has rejected a second apology from the Swedish show which featured a warning to Chinese tourists not to defecate in public. As diplomatic tensions between two countries loom, the program says its message was lost.

The episode of the satirical show Svenska Nyheter (Swedish News), aired by national broadcaster SVT, the largest TV network in the country, took the theme of ‘welcoming Chinese people to Sweden’. Instructions included a sign saying that “pooping outside historic buildings” is banned and an explanation that pet dogs are not for lunch.

The show also mocked the reaction of a Chinese family who has been violently dragged from a hostel in Stockholm earlier in September. 

Part of the episode was posted on Youku, a popular Chinese video website. Furious with the portrayal of Chinese people in the show, Beijing demanded an apology from the channel.

Initially reluctant to make any pardons, SVT program manager Thomas Hall released a statement on Monday regretting that “the whole message” of the show “was lost” as only a portion of it was uploaded. 

Hall said that as the whole segment had been released on YouTube with English subtitles, everyone could see the “anti-racist intent” of the show, he added. SVT Program Director Jan Helin also called on Beijing to “to distinguish between satire expressions and news.”

But this form of an apology did not satisfy the Chinese Embassy in Stockholm which demanded a “sincere” one. Hall’s statements “are nothing but making up excuses and evading the point,” it stated on Tuesday.

Hall apparently decided to grab another chance. In another post, only a day later, he insisted that the segment about Chinese tourists’ ‘pooping’ was “cut out of context” and apologized to those who feel offended by the show. 

Once again, Hall’s apologies didn’t impress China which dubbed it “insincere, hypocritical and without any real intention.” It called upon the channel, and the program in particular, to “stop using excuses such as ‘original intention’, ‘message lost’ or ‘cultural crash’ to cover up and stop committing more mistakes.”

The spat over the sketch risks escalating into a full-scale diplomatic crisis. The Chinese Foreign Ministry has already called the incident “a gross insult” and a “vicious attack” on China and its people. Netizens on Chinese microblogging platform Weibo launched a hashtag “Swedish TV Show Insults China” which has gathered millions of re-tweets so far.

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