Jolin Tsai Accused Of “Insulting China” After She Showed Support For Taiwan's Olympians

Like everyone else in the world, celebrities have been publicly rooting for their country’s athletes at the Tokyo Games, but those, like Dee Hsu, who cheered for the Taiwanese players inadvertently sparked a whole load of controversy.

On Saturday (Jul 31), Taiwanese badminton duo Lee Yang and Wang Chi-lin beat China’s Liu Yuchen and Li Junhui to bring home Taiwan’s — or, to be more politically correct, Chinese Taipei’s — first Olympic gold medal in the sport.

Lee Yang, 25, later took to Facebook to proudly declare: “I am Lee Yang, I am from Kinmen, I am from Taiwan. [Flag of Taiwan emojis] We have let the world see Taiwan (...) The highest glory in the Olympic hall is dedicated to my country, Taiwan.”

Taiwanese pop queen Jolin Tsai, 40, shared a photo of Lee Yang and Chi-lin on her Instagram Stories and added four sparkling heart emojis to show her love for them after their win.

The star also shared some words of encouragement for Taiwanese badminton player Tai Tzu-ying, who took home silver in her match against China’s Chen Yufei.

The term “Pro-Taiwanese independence Jolin Tsai” soon became a trending topic on Weibo, and her social media pages became flooded with unpleasant comments from Chinese netizens, who said things like, “Damn Taiwanese, don’t come to China” and “It looks like Jolin is planning to give up the mainland Chinese market”.

On the other hand, there were those who pointed out that Jolin has also congratulated Chinese Olympic winners in the past, which shows that she is genuinely supporting all athletes and not trying to express any political views.

While the backlash against Jolin is only limited to angry remarks so far, her good friend Dee Hsu is reportedly having it a lot worse after committing a similar ‘offence’.

The 43-year-old Taiwanese host recently got into hot water when she referred to Taiwan’s Olympians as “our national athletes” in her reply to an Instagram comment.

Things got so bad that she was dropped from multiple endorsement deals, resulting in an estimated NT$32mil (S$1.55mil) loss in income.

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Photos: Lee Yang/Facebook, Jolin Tsai/Instagram and Facebook, Tai Tzu Ying/Facebook