Chinese Facebook Video Exposes Detergent Truth

They look at each other suggestively. She puts a tab of detergent into his mouth.... ... Hey presto! He emerges a fair-skinned Chinese man. ... The lady doing laundry is apparently delighted by this development. ... It has appalled many on Facebook and other forums over the last 24 hours.

After a few seconds of calmly listening to him scream and struggle, she lifts the lid with a smile to reveal that the black man has been transformed – into the pale-skinned young Chinese man of her dreams. An anodyne tagline follows: “Change begins with Qiaobi.” ... The posting drew explosive responses from pundits and viewers in the West, who quickly dubbed it the “most racist ad ever” and, more often than not, excoriated China as a place of narrow-minded xenophobia and unrestrained bigotry. The detergent company apologized for the ad.

After undergoing a wash, the man emerges as a light-skinned, clean Chinese man. Qiaobi, the company behind the ad, issued an apology – but said the international media is exaggerating the reaction.

The ad seemingly rips off a similar, and also offensive, Italian advert, in which a slim Italian man is washed with “color” detergent and emerges a muscular black man with the slogan “Color is better.”

Laundry product firm denies racial slur in commercial that has outraged the world

A Chinese laundry detergent commercial has spurred outrage online, with many social media users accusing it of blatant racism.

By now, much of the internet has seen—and been rightfully outraged by—a very racist Chinese laundry-detergent ad. In the ad, an Asian woman uses laundry detergent to “clean up” a black man and turn him into an Asian one.

A Chinese detergent maker has blamed foreign media for whipping up controversy over an ad in which a black man “washed” by its product was transformed into an Asian man.

I believe that there are few ... practices that inform contemporary capitalism and that are, ultimately, behind the Qiaobi detergent advert....