President of Argentina Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner found herself in hot water today after sending a tweet in which she mocked the Chinese accent during an official visit.
She met with Chinese President Xi Jingping during an official visit to make the final arrangements and seal several important financial deals between Argentina and China, and sent a very ill-judged tweet afterwards.
The scale of the visit by Kirchner to Beijing was pretty huge, as she oversaw a meeting between 1,000 Chinese and Argentine business people, as well as finalising 15 agreements with China on issues from nuclear energy to agriculture, which will be of huge benefit to a struggling economy back home that is depending on doing business with one of the world's largest economies.
CFK se reunió con Xi Jinping, ratificó la alianza con China y firmó 15 nuevos convenios bilaterales @CFKArgentina pic.twitter.com/b14XDcNmzE
— Casa Rosada (@CasaRosadaAR) February 4, 2015
While on that front she was doing quite well, her tweet afterwards was not the wisest, as she mocked a stereotypical Chinese accent by replacing the letter 'r' with the letter 'l' in her tweet.
It translates roughly as "more than 1,000 attending the event... will they all be from "La Cámpola" (La Cámpora is an Argentine political movement) and did they all come for the lice and petloleum?".
She quickly removed the tweet (not before it had been screengrabbed, of course) and later tweeted saying "sorry, the levels of ridiculousness and absurdity are so high they can only be digested with humor."
Sorry. ¿Sabes qué? Es que es tanto el exceso del ridículo y el absurdo, que sólo se digiere con humor. Sino son muy, pero muy tóxicos.
— Cristina Kirchner (@CFKArgentina) February 4, 2015
Via Bloomberg.com