US Apologizes for White House's Embarassing Taiwan Gaffe

The United States has apologized for the White House mistakenly referring to Xi Jinping as the President of Taiwan, according to a Chinese official.

Earlier this week, Geng Shuang, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, announced that the US had already said sorry for the embarassing gaffe:

“According to my understanding, the Chinese side has already raised this with the United States side. The United States side apologized and said this was a technological error that has already been corrected.”

The factually incorrect reference happened when the White House's Office of the Press Secretary released a statement on Donald Trump's 90-minute meeting with Xi at the annual G20 summit, which wrapped up last weekend in Hamburg, Germany.

Noting that the two spoke about North Korea, the statement identified Xi as the leader of the Republic of China, otherwise known as Taiwan.

That apparently wasn't the Trump administration's only G20 blunder. A post on Trump's Instagram account accidentally identified Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore as President Joko Widodo of Indonesia. And another erroneous White House statement called Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe "President Abe of Japan."

[Image via The Guardian]