China expels Austrian national for 'racist rant'

China on Friday expelled an Austrian national working in the country after his "racist rant against Chinese people" went viral on social media, official media reported. The Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences where Austrian Mark A Kolars worked as a visual effects artist issued a statement on Thursday saying he had been dismissed from his position, stat-run China Daily said in a report.

Later the government also revoked his residence permit, the daily reported. On Friday, the office of exit and entry control of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau said 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 that 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, the report said. It said the action followed after Kolars on Tuesday posted comments on his LinkedIn account which 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, which is akin to Twitter in China, and the 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, the report said.

According to the news report, 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.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)