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Ada Li

Furious Chinese fans have blasted the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) after official merchandise for the World Team Table Tennis Championships twice got the nation’s flag wrong.
Posters, T-shirts and hoodies, priced between £35 (HK$350) and £67, all celebrating the victories for the country’s men and women, initially featured a flag with six stars, not five as it should have done.
Fans first spotted the error on Friday, and flooded social media with complaints directed at the ITTF and Table Tennis England. One widely shared Weibo post drew more than 10,000 comments.
“Even something like this can happen – what is the Chinese Table Tennis Association (CTTA) doing?” one fan wrote. “If you want to make money from us, learn to show some respect first.”
“Which country has a six-star red flag?” another asked.

Hours later, the ITTF updated the image without commenting publicly. However, while the number of stars was reduced from six to five, the revised version still showed the yellow stars in the wrong position, further angering fans.
“After pointing out the problem, they changed it and still got it wrong,” one user wrote. “This shows no sincerity.”
Some fans called for the merchandise to be withdrawn. “Take it down. There is not even basic respect,” one comment read. Another said: “The Chinese flag is still wrong after the change. What is this supposed to mean?”
Others criticised the CTTA, saying it had not done enough to respond to the issue.
“What did CTTA do in this incident? How can they allow this to happen?” one social media user said.
“China is the world’s strongest table tennis nation, but why can the sport’s governing body keep making such basic mistakes over and over?”
A separate backlash then erupted over the image chosen to represent China’s women, with the poster featuring world No 2 Wang Manyu rather than world No 1 Sun Yingsha.
“They are ignoring the only women’s player to have won the event’s top player honour at two consecutive editions of the century-old World Championships,” one fan wrote. “Do they not know what the five-star flag looks like, or what MVP means?”


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Instead of China’s five-star flag, the design showed six stars.

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Sport

China

Furious fans take to social media to blast International Table Tennis Federation for twice getting country’s flag wrong on official items


Furious fans take to social media to blast International Table Tennis Federation for twice getting country’s flag wrong on official items.


Sun Yingsha

Wang Manyu

China flag row erupts after table tennis chiefs make team title merchandise gaffe

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Furious fans take to social media to blast International Table Tennis Federation for twice getting country’s flag wrong on official items

Furious fans take to social media to blast International Table Tennis Federation for twice getting country’s flag wrong on official items