A Beijing restaurant’s refusal to serve customers from countries locked in maritime territorial disputes with China has drawn the ire of netizens from at least one of the nations—Vietnam.
The restaurant has put up on its window racially charged signs in Chinese and English that said, “This shop does not welcome Japanese, Filipinos, and Vietnamese, and dogs,” according to photo posted on the Facebook social networking site last week.
The owner of the restaurant in Beijing’s Houhai neighborhood, surnamed Wang, told BBC News this week he doesn’t care what others feel about the sign and that he put it up out of “patriotism.”
“Chinese customers support me,” he said.
China is currently embroiled in territorial disputes with Japan over islands in the East China Sea, and with the Philippines and Vietnam over islands in the South China Sea. Tensions with Japan over the disputes boiled over into a wave of anti-Japanese protests in Chinese cities last fall.