Quan Hongchan of China smiles after competing in women’s diving 10-meter platform final at the 2020 Summer Olympic Games on August 5, 2021, in Tokyo, Japan. Photo: CFP

News.com.au, a conservative Australian news website under Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, enraged Chinese netizens with a recent article that defamed China's Olympic gold medalist Quan Hongchan with weird, offensive words.

Fourteen-year-old diver Quan, the youngest in China's team to Tokyo Olympic Games, won gold in the women's 10-meter platform on Thursday with an incomparable performance that included three perfect-ten dives.

Despite of Quan's exciting smile and a big hug with her coach after the final score came out, news.com.au wrote on Thursday that Quan "remained entirely pokerfaced [and] did not crack even the slimmest of smiles. Viewers were shocked at Quan's reaction," it claimed.

The news site even said in the caption of a picture in the article that Quan "looked devastated after being given a perfect score" which was obviously not the case and, in a lack of basic human touch, tried to describe this young gold medalist as an odd, taciturn teenager.

The news.com.au article sparked anger among some Chinese netizens on Thursday who criticized this Australian media outlet for slandering Chinese athletes with misinformation and bias.

"Are the employees of the news site blind? Are they professional journalists?" one netizen wrote on social media "Shame on them for groundlessly attacking a young diving talent with such malicious remarks. Must apologize," other added.

Born in a village in South China's Guangdong Province, Quan is an ordinary teenage girl who, just like any other Chinese teen, likes to eat snacks and play games on her phone.

Defaming Chinese people is a customary tactic of some racist Western media outlets, which like to describe Chinese as either "mobsters" or soulless "machines," observers said.

Prior to news.com.au, the New York Times last week called Chinese athletes "sports machines" in the prejudiced article "The Chinese Sports Machine's Single Goal: The Most Gold, at Any Cost," slandering China and its people with demonized labels.

"Politicizing sports and insulting our Olympic heroes are extremely unethical," a Chinese netizen criticized. "These Western media have broken the mortal bottom line."