Former National Basketball Association (NBA) star Dwight Howard has triggered a wave of criticism on Chinese social media for calling Taiwan a country in a promotional video with Taiwan's vice president.
The video, released on Wednesday, showed the U.S. basketball player supporting a campaign for a select number of foreign tourists to spend a night in Taiwan's presidential office building.
China claims sovereignty over self-ruled Taiwan and says the island is not a separate country but part of "one China" governed by Beijing. China says it will never renounce the use of force to enforce its claims. It did not take long for a backlash to build following the release of the video. The hashtag #HowardTaiwanindependence went viral on China's Weibo social media platform, earning almost 400 million hits by Friday.Howard last year joined the Taoyuan Leopards, a professional Taiwanese team. The most famous player to ever appear in Taiwan's T1 League did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The island's government rejects China's sovereignty claims and says only the Taiwanese people can decide their future.
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