“This is humiliating,” one China fan wrote on social media platform Weibo, where the defeat has become a trending topic, garnering more than 460 million views by Friday morning.
That the defeat came at the hands of Japan adds to the agony for Chinese fans. Sporting rivalries between the two countries often bear the undertones of their historical relationship, strained by – among other sore points – Japan’s brutal occupation of China in the first half of the 20th century, and current disputes over the sovereignty of the Senkaku Islands, which China calls the Diaoyus.
