Thai Actor Bright Vachirawit Apologizes To Chinese Netizens for Liking Tweet That Labelled “Hong Kong” as A Country

On the evening of the 20th June, Thai actor Bright Vachirawait (otherwise known as “Bright”) posted a video on Weibo, apologizing to Chinese netizens in Chinese.

Thai TV star Vachirawat Cheevaari. Photo: InstagramThai Actor Bright Vachirawait starred in the hit drama, “2gether”

In the video, the actor, who had starred in the hit Boys Love drama, “2gether”, said, “I’m sorry China, I’m really sorry to you.”

What happened?


In case you haven’t caught wind on what happened, Bright retweeted a tweet back in April, where the tweet had mistakenly labelled Hong Kong as being a country.

Original photo captured by @yamastudio

Upon realizing the mistake, Bright made an official apology on Twitter, saying that he made a ‘thoughtless’ retweet which he was very sorry for.

The Chinese netizens were initially thankful for his clarification and showed their support for him.

However, a week after he made the tweet apologizing for his actions, his model girlfriend, Weeraya Sukaram retweeted a tweet that alleged a virology lab in China of being home to 15000 strains of viruses in China, included those that were used to test on bats in order to make vaccines. The tweet also alleged that China accused the US of sending the virus to Wuhan, but yet they did not allow foreigners to conduct checks on the lab to see if the virus has really been released from there.

Image Source: Mothership

Weeraya has adjusted her security settings on Twitter to set it on private mode as of writing. However, since the incident from two months ago, Bright has remained silent on his girlfriend’s behaviour.

Upset that Bright has not spoken up on the issue, fans in China urged for the boycott of the series “2gether.” The subtitle team for the drama series has also expressed that they will be no longer subbing the drama, since they hope to put their love for their homeland ahead of everything else.

Hashtags that related to the boycott of Bright’s drama over than 4.6 billion views and over 1.4 million posts on Weibo back in April.

Bright’s apology

Though the incident sparked off a huge discussion on Twitter and Weibo, Bright did not directly address the issue to netizens in China until recently.

In the 90minute long video posted to Weibo on 20th June, Bright shared that because of a huge amount of pressure at work, coupled with his busy schedule, he was finally only able to speak up on the matter after completing his first livestream project. In response to the accusations of him being accused of insulting China, he believes that it is a misunderstanding. He said that he respects China and every Chinese citizen. He has never once thought of insulting people of any particular race. With regards to liking the tweet by accident, he admitted that he did not look through the details of the tweet properly and he is sorry for not having the awareness to do at that time.

Bright also expressed that he was of Chinese descent and would never look down on China or the Chinese. At the end of the video, he also bowed and apologized to every Chinese citizen.

However, Bright’s apology was not well received by the Chinese as his followers have steadily dropped from 600 000 on Weibo to less than 420 000 on Weibo.

Top comments in response to his video include “You only remembered to apologize after so long? Is there a time lag? If it wasn’t for that much money would. you have apologized?”


Sources (1), (2) and (3)

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