Canada said it regretted a “misunderstanding” after China lodged a formal complaint over a diplomat's order of a custom T-shirt displaying the word Wuhan, the city where the Covid-19 pandemic first emerged, over the emblem of hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan.
The logo of the American group is a stylised “W”. Reports of the T-shirt order circulating on China's Twitter-like Weibo described it as depicting a bat, without mentioning Wu-Tang Clan. Many scientists suspect bats to have been a reservoir for Covid-19 before it jumped to humans.
It was not immediately clear how images of the T-shirt logo, which the Canadian embassy said was created early last year, came to circulate on Chinese social media.
“We are very shocked by this and have lodged representations with Canada, asking for a thorough investigation and a clear explanation,” foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said in response to a question at a daily briefing on Monday, adding that the virus should not be linked to specific countries or regions.