Versace apologizes to China for a "defective" shirt and pulls it off the market

Versace has not identified the jersey in a message on the site "Weibo", a popular social networking site in China. But the Global Times said the T-shirts mistakenly described Hong Kong and Macao as states, not Chinese cities, as the two former European colonies returned to Chinese sovereignty in the late 1990s.

The excuses came after a Chinese actress broke her ties with Italian society, claiming that he suspected clothes of undermining China's sovereignty. The studio of the actress Yang Mi, brand ambbadador Versace, said in a message posted on the site "Weibo" that she had sent a notice to the Italian fashion house for that she terminates his contract. Part of the statement from the studio said: "The sovereignty and territorial integrity of the motherland are sacred and can not be violated."

The luxury fashion house said the shirts were removed from all sales channels on July 24 and are being phased out. "It was a neglect of our society and we apologize for the impact it has had," he said in a message to WIPO. "Versace affirms his love for China and his great respect for the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of the country," the pamphlet said.

Versace was not the first foreign company to have a problem with the way she described Hong Kong. China has asked international airlines and other companies to qualify the city of "Hong Kong-China" on their websites, rather than just Hong Kong.

Hong Kong and Macau are semi-autonomous and have distinct identities of China in the minds of many people. The Versace incident took place at a sensitive time for China, while Democratic demonstrators in Hong Kong were on the streets all summer, motivated by the desire to protect their way of life from any interference from the central government in Beijing.