Photo taken on July 21, 2019 from Xiangshan Mountain shows the Taipei 101 skyscraper in Taipei, southeast China's Taiwan. (Xinhua/Zhu Xiang)

 
US computer peripherals and hardware maker Corsair apologized over the weekend after an instruction manual for one of its memory products was found to have listed the island of Taiwan as the "country of manufacture," which sparked widespread anger among the Chinese public.

Corsair's memory items were seen being removed from e-commerce platforms, including Taobao and JD.com, on Sunday. Infuriated by such an offense, Chinese mainland users took to social media to urge a boycott of Corsair-branded products. 

In an apology statement on its Weibo official account on Saturday, Corsair said that consumer complaints about printed packaging errors related to the country or region of manufacture were verified as true. 

The company has taken all relevant products off the shelves, read the statement, vowing against the recurrence of any factual inconsistency.

The apology was issued after the user manual of a Corsair memory product was revealed on Friday to have mistakenly categorized the island as the "country of manufacture." 

A screenshot of a conversation with a customer service representative with Corsair's self-operated flagship store on JD.com was also shared on Weibo. 

The representative said the omission might be caused by a lack of attention during printing and there were no plans to modify it at the moment. The complaints would be filed with the manufacturer, pending correction, according to the representative.

The manufacturer of the controversial item is located in the island of Taiwan. The island is a major location for Corsair's global strategy and the US firm has more than 600 employees on the island, with offices in Taipei and Taoyuan, covering research and development, manufacturing, sales and marketing and customer services, Chinese news site guancha.cn reported Sunday.

The apology was insufficient to appease angry social media users, who flooded the comments section under the apology post with criticism of the US brand.

One of the most-liked comments accused Corsair of "typically eating your rice while smashing your pot." 

It's noteworthy that the apology has yet to be posted on Corsair's other social media accounts, including Facebook and Twitter. 

A search for "Corsair memory" yielded no results on e-commerce platforms from Taobao and Tmall to JD.com. But the US brand's flagship stores on Tmall and JD.com remain operational, with other computer gear such as keyboards on sale.

The Corsair farce was the latest in a string of erroneous listings or incomplete Chinese maps implicating foreign brands in recent years.

At a press conference on Friday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China, in response to a request for comment on convenience chain store 7-Eleven, which was fined for displaying an incorrect and incomplete Chinese map that labeled the island of Taiwan as "an independent country."

In late December, Seven-Eleven Beijing Co was slapped with a fine of 150,000 yuan ($23,519) by the Dongcheng branch of the Beijing Municipal Commission of Planning and Natural Resources for displaying an incomplete Chinese map on its website and for mistakes such as labeling the island of Taiwan as "an independent country."

Global Times