President of Argentina branded a racist after Chinese 'joke'

Argentina's president Cristina Kirchner has been labelled a racist following a comment she made on social media which mocked the way some Chinese people struggle to pronounce the letter 'r'.

The message translates to: "Did they only come for lice and petloleum?"

Her tweet, which was sent ahead of a visit to China to bolster economic and political cooperation between the two countries, was retweeted over 4,000 times. It was even pinned to the top of her timeline, giving it extra prominence.

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Her tweet caused outrage across social media and even appeared on front pages of newspapers back in Argentina. However, there was no official response from her hosts and her comments have gone unmentioned by Chinese media.

But online comment in China has been less restrained, says Bree Feng in the New York Times.

"You come to China to get money, but you aren't even respectful. Don't come to our country. You're not welcome," said one user.

Some took a more sneering tone: "We don’t want to take it too seriously: Argentina is just a dot on the world map, such a little place." While others simply challenged Kirchner to try and pronounce words in Mandarin accurately.

She later apologised, tweeting to her 3.5 million followers: "Sorry, the levels of ridiculousness and absurdity are so high they can only be digested with humour. Otherwise they get really, really toxic."

Her cabinet chief, Jorge Capitanich, said that the tweet was a sign of affection, [2]Bloomberg reports.

Kirchner is facing plummeting approval ratings and a political crisis back home in Argentina relating to the mysterious death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman. He was found dead in January after drafting a warrant for the president's arrest, the day before he was due to give evidence to Congress.