Embassy in China ordered “Wuhan Bat” T-shirt? Canadian response

The band’s graphics on the back of the concert footage of the American hip-hop group Wudang Gang are indeed similar to the custom-made graphics circulating on the Internet.

Reuters reports that in response to a report that Canadian embassy staff in China ordered cultural shirts with a “Wuhan bat” design last July, Canada said on Feb. 2 that the staff in Wuhan wanted a design that represented the hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan (Wu The Canadian staff in Wuhan said on Feb. 2 that they wanted the image to represent the hip-hop group “Wu Tang Clan” (WuTang Clan) with a W, not a bat pattern.

A Canadian Foreign Affairs spokesman told Reuters by email on Feb. 2: “The T-shirt logo designed by a member of the embassy shows a stylized W and is not intended to represent a bat. It was made in early 2020 by Canadian embassy staff who were assisting with the evacuation.”

Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs said, “We regret this misunderstanding.”

The Canadian Embassy in China said the T-shirt logo was made early last year, and it’s unclear how the graphics made their way around Chinese social media.

The photo currently circulating on the Internet shows a bat spreading its wings with the capital English word WUHAN in the middle, while the content of the T-shirt order circulating on Weibo shows that the order depicts the bat, with no mention of the Wudang gang.

This comes at a Time when a team of world health experts is investigating the source of the outbreak in Wuhan, and many scientists had also suspected that bats were intermediaries in the transmission of the CCP virus from animals to humans. The topic in question is particularly sensitive at such a time.

In response to a related question at a regular press conference on Feb. 1, CCP Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said, “China is alarmed by this and has made solemn representations to the Canadian Embassy in Beijing, demanding that the Canadian side immediately investigate the matter thoroughly and give China a clear explanation.”

Beijing has been highly sensitive to the source of the CCP virus and has sought to dispute the claim that it originated in China. Wang Wenbin stressed that the virus should not be linked to a specific country or region.