{"id":15541,"date":"2016-11-22T09:15:05","date_gmt":"2016-11-22T09:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=15541"},"modified":"2016-11-22T09:15:05","modified_gmt":"2016-11-22T09:15:05","slug":"daimler-executive-removed-accusations-insulted-chinese-stir-online-anger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/business\/daimler-executive-removed-accusations-insulted-chinese-stir-online-anger.html","title":{"rendered":"Daimler Executive Is Removed After Accusations That He Insulted Chinese Stir Online Anger"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">BEIJING \u2014 A single spark can start a prairie fire, Mao Zedong said. And an impulsive outburst of bigoted words can start a wildfire on the internet in China, as a manager for Daimler, the German automaker, has learned to his regret.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Daimler Greater China said it had removed a manager after a \u201cregrettable matter.\u201d The emailed statement from the company, a unit of Daimler, which makes Mercedes-Benz cars and other prestigious vehicles, did not identify the manager or say exactly what he had done.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">But the Chinese news media and internet users have been much blunter. They accused Rainer G\u00e4rtner, the president and chief executive officer of Daimler Trucks and Buses (China), of insulting the Chinese people on Sunday during a squabble with a driver over a parking spot on the outskirts of Beijing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">The controversy took off this week after a user of Weibo, a popular Chinese microblog service, accused Mr. G\u00e4rtner of insulting Chinese people after a standoff over the parking spot in Shunyi, a district in northeast Beijing where many middle-class foreigners and Chinese live in townhouse communities that rub shoulders with poorer residents who used to be farmers.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Daimler\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">@Daimler<\/a> China Sacks German Executive over Racist Remarks on Chinese People<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/hpHJVu014o\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/t.co\/hpHJVu014o<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/eyG7UoLLsP\" target=\"_blank\">pic.twitter.com\/eyG7UoLLsP<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">\u2014 People&#8217;s Daily,China (@PDChina) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/PDChina\/status\/800827313675866112\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">November 21, 2016<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">\u201cI am in China one year already,\u201d Mr. G\u00e4rtner told the Chinese motorist in English, according to the account, which the Beijing News said came from a friend of the motorist. It said Mr. G\u00e4rtner went on to say, \u201cThe first thing I learned here is\u2019\u2019 and then used a crude insult to describe \u201call you Chinese.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">The account also said Mr. G\u00e4rtner used pepper spray against members of the gathering crowd, including one man whose eyes were hurt by the spray.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Mr. G\u00e4rtner has not commented publicly on the quarrel and did not respond to messages, and neither Daimler nor the police in Beijing have shared details, so it was impossible to know whether he agreed with that description of events.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Even so, the Chinese news media and many internet users seized on Mr. G\u00e4rtner as an example of arrogant Western bigotry and demanded that he and Daimler apologize. He became the latest example of the power of the Chinese internet to humble governments, companies and people accused of wounding national pride.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">\u201cSome people think this was making a mountain out of a molehill,\u201d said an editorial on Tuesday in Southern Daily, an official newspaper for the southern province of Guangdong.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">But, it continued, some foreign companies \u201coften use racially prejudiced words and actions about Chinese consumers, even Chinese employees.\u201d Foreign executives \u201ceasily become arrogant about the Chinese market,\u201d it said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Mr. G\u00e4rtner, a German, had worked at the Chinese truck and bus unit since July 2015, after a six-year stint in South Korea, according to his profile on LinkedIn.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">The controversy over Mr. G\u00e4rtner has come hard on the heels of another volatile episode, when G\u00fcnther H. Oettinger, a European Union commissioner from Germany, apologized after making crudely disparaging comments about Chinese people.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Initially, Daimler Greater China said on Monday that it was \u201cdeeply sorry\u201d about the dispute and stressed that such comments by employees \u201cdo not represent Daimler,\u201d according to Chinese news reports.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">But as the public anger in China grew on Monday, the company acted and announced Mr. G\u00e4rtner\u2019s departure from his job.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">In making the announcement, Daimler Greater China said the dispute, while a private issue, was \u201cdetrimental to the standing of our company, unbecoming of a manager of our brand and prejudicial to our good name.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Chinese news reports celebrated the decision as a victory for good sense, and many appeared to assume that Mr. G\u00e4rtner had been fired from Daimler.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">But the corporate communications office for Daimler Greater China did not answer questions about whether Mr. G\u00e4rtner had been dismissed the company or moved on, perhaps pending a new assignment elsewhere in the company.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Global Times, a popular Chinese newspaper, said it was understandable that frustrated drivers in Beijing, a painfully congested city, would exchange sharp words over parking spots.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">\u201cBut no matter how filthy the words, hearts should not be filthy,\u201d it said. \u201cThere\u2019s no explaining away an argument that escalates to using \u2018You Chinese. &#8230;\u2019 \u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-background-color\">\n\t\t\t  <div \n\t\t\t  \tclass = \"fb-comments\" \n\t\t\t  \tdata-href = \"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/business\/daimler-executive-removed-accusations-insulted-chinese-stir-online-anger.html\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-numposts = \"10\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-lazy = \"true\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-colorscheme = \"light\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-order-by = \"social\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-mobile=true>\n\t\t\t  <\/div><\/div>\n\t\t  <style>\n\t\t    .fb-background-color {\n\t\t\t\tbackground: #ffffff !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t.fb_iframe_widget_fluid_desktop iframe {\n\t\t\t    width: 630px !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t  <\/style>\n\t\t  ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BEIJING \u2014 A single spark can start a prairie fire, Mao Zedong said. And an impulsive outburst of bigoted words can start a wildfire on the internet in China, as a manager for Daimler, the German automaker, has learned to his regret. Daimler Greater China said it had removed a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":15543,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[146,6722,9640,9639,3242],"class_list":["post-15541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-business-news","tag-china","tag-daimler-ag","tag-daimler-executive-is-removed-after-accusations-that-he-insulted-chinese-stir-online-anger","tag-latest-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}