Chinese News Staff Suspended After Saying Xi "Resigned"

Sometimes a mistake made during your job can have serious consequences. Four of the editorial staff at a Chinese news agency have been suspended after a typographical error accidentally called President Xi Jinping's speech in Johannesburg his "resignation."

The error was in relation to his speech at the China-Africa summit, in particular the specific Chinese word used to denote "speech". China News Service' original version of the story reported that President Xi had spoken about the similar experience between China and Africa in his "resignation."

The Information Centre for Human Right and Democracy NGO, based in Hong-Kong, explained with Al Jazeera, that the Chinese news agency accidentally replaced the Chinese pinyin word for "speech", "zhici", with the word for "resignation", "cizhi". The Bangkok Post adds that the word processor used converts pinyin to Chinese characters, so it is possible that the error was started from a technical source.

The error had gone unnoticed by around 20 state-run news websites and so they perpetuated the error. It was fixed about one hour and 20 minutes later. The reason it may have took that long to find the error is due to an order from the Communist Party's propaganda department, which states that major news stories involving state leaders should always use reports created by the department's official news agencies.

According to the NGO, the mistake caused the suspension of two editors and two reporters from the South Africa department. However, the chief editor's office would not verify the information with the South China Morning Post.

The South China Morning Post talked to a senior editor at a mainland state newspaper who had an optimistic outlook for the situation.

"Some people will receive a warning and might be suspended from work for a while to show to the propaganda department that they take such a mistake very seriously. After a while, when the incident is forgotten, they will be able to resume their duties"

This isn't the first time a Chinese news agency had committed an egregious error. Xinhua, only two days prior to this incident, misspelled the Chinese translation of President Barack Obama's name as "Ao Ma Ba." The People's Daily also misspelled China's 2010 premier's name as "Wen Jiashi" instead of Wen Jiabao. However, Wen was understanding and called the newspaper explaining that he understood how the mistake was made and asked that no one should be punished for it.