Foreigner fired for racist rant against China

A foreign employee of the Chinese Academy of Sciences whose racist rant against Chinese people went viral on social media has been fired and had his residence permit revoked.

The academy’s Institute of Automation where Austrian Mark A. Kolars worked as a visual effects artist, issued a statement on Thursday saying he’d been dismissed from his position.

On Friday, the office of exit and entry control of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau said in a statement that it revoked Kolars’ work-related residence permit on Thursday. It also stated that the Austrian had been asked to leave the country within a specified period of time.

An official from the office was quoted as saying foreigners were welcome to invest, work and study in China, but they must abide by the country’s laws and respect its culture and history.

On Tuesday, Kolars posted comments on his LinkedIn account that read “not racist, just don’t like dirty yellow guys, talking trash all day long … We are here to make money and you need us. Without us to begin with you would still wear rice heads”.

The institute launched an investigation after screenshots of the comments went viral on Sina Weibo and question-and-answer website Zhihu. Chinese netizens were furious and demanded Kolars, who claimed to hold a foreign expert green card and to have lived in China for two decades, be fired and banned from entering the country again.

In the past few weeks, Kolars posted numerous inappropriate comments related to China and made claims about the genetic superiority of Europeans over Chinese.

Kolars has since deleted his profile picture on LinkedIn, and issued an apology on the social media platform saying the posts “were inappropriate and racist in nature”.

He said he was sorry for the trouble he caused for his family and friends and was willing to take responsibility for everything that happened.