Mercedes-Benz removed a video advertisement from a Chinese social media website, state media in the country has said, after the clip got swept up in a charged national debate over depictions of Asian-looking features by foreign companies.
The video was posted on Mercedes-Benz’s official Weibo account on Saturday and later removed due to public blacklash, the Communist Party’s Global Times newspaper reported. "The makeup of the female model looked like slanted eyes and once again aroused a heated discussion from netizens with many blaming that the makeup reflects Western stereotypes about Asian people,” the paper said Tuesday.
The report included a screenshot of the video showing a woman who is apparently Chinese, though Bloomberg News hasn’t seen the full version of the ad. Emails and phone calls to Martin Sauber and Juan Zhou, the China press representatives for Daimler AG, were not immediately returned.
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