In December 2002,
NBA star
Shaquille O'Neal received media flak for saying "Tell [NBA
center]
Yao Ming, 'Ching chong yang, wah, ah soh'" during an interview on
Fox Sports Net. O'Neal later said it was
locker-room humor and he meant no offense. Yao believed that O'Neal was joking but said a lot of Asians would not see the humor. Yao joked, "
Chinese is hard to learn. I had trouble with it when I was little." O'Neal added, "I mean, if I was the first one to do it, and the only one to do it, I could see what they're talking about. But if I offended anybody, I apologize." Branding the segment as demeaning and racist, several Asian American organizations threatened to ask advertisers to withdraw their support from the show if the station did not issue an apology. On February 22, 2006, Carolla read a brief apology for the segment. On April 26, 2006, Carolla had the head of the Media Action Network for Asian Americans,
Guy Aoki on his show. Aoki opined that "ching chong" is equivalent to "
nigger". On December 5, 2006, comedian and co-host
Rosie O'Donnell of
The View used a series of
ching chongs to imitate newscasters in China. The
Asian American Journalists Association said her comments were "a mockery of the Chinese language and, in effect, a perpetuation of stereotypes of Asian Americans as foreigners or
second-class citizens ... and gives the impression that they are a group that is substandard to English-speaking people". Cindi Berger, O'Donnell's representative, said: "She's a comedian in addition to being a talk show co-host. I certainly hope that one day they will be able to grasp her humor." On December 14 on
The View, O'Donnell said she was unaware that
ching chong was an offensive way to make fun of Asian accents, and she was informed it was on par with the "N-word". She apologized to "those people who felt hurt".
Jeff Yang, who tracks Asian and Asian-American trends for a market research firm, said O'Donnell should have apologized not for people's hurt feelings but "for spreading and encouraging ignorance."
Time called it a "
pseudo-apology". O'Donnell later wrote in her autobiography
Celebrity Detox: The Fame Game that "I wish I had been a bit more pure in my public apology." On January 19, 2011, conservative political commentator
Rush Limbaugh mocked Chinese president
Hu Jintao during his visit to the
White House on his radio show. "Hu Jintao—He was speaking and they weren't translating. They normally translate every couple of words. Hu Jintao was just going ching chong, ching chong cha," said Limbaugh, who imitated Hu's speech for 17 seconds. Representative
Judy Chu of
California said that Limbaugh's words were the same ones that Chinese Americans have heard in the past 150 years as they faced racial discrimination while "they were called racial slurs, were spat upon in the streets, derided in the halls of Congress and even brutally murdered". California State Senator
Leland Yee also criticized Limbaugh for his remarks: "His classless act is an insult to over 3,000 years of cultural history, and is a slap in the face to the millions of Chinese Americans who have struggled in this country and to a people who constitute one-quarter of the world's population." Yee demanded an apology from Limbaugh for what he and others view as racist and derogatory remarks. He also organized with civil rights groups—including
Chinese for Affirmative Action,
Japanese American Citizens League and the
California National Organization for Women—to boycott companies like
ProFlowers,
Sleep Train and
Domino's Pizza that advertised on
Limbaugh's talk show. Yee received threatening messages and also received a fax from an unknown sender which made racist comments and called him a
Marxist. "Rush Limbaugh will kick your
Chink ass and expose you for the fool you are," part of the memo said. In March 2011,
UCLA student Alexandra Wallace uploaded a
YouTube video entitled "UCLA Asians in the library", ranting about the "hordes of Asians" in UCLA who don't "use American manners". In a rant about Asians speaking loudly on a cellphone in the campus library, she mimicked one as saying, "Ohhh! Ching chong, ling long, ting tong! Ohhh!". Her rant inspired heated criticism, not only because of her use of the "ching chong" stereotype but also because of the timing: a
major tsunami had just occurred in Japan, leading her to complain, "I swear they're going through their whole families, just checking on everybody from the tsunami thing."
Colbert satirized a charity to Native Americans using the offensive word "Redskins" in its name, and stated that he would be starting his own similar charity called "Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to
Orientals or Whatever", adding "I owe all this sensitivity to Redskins owner Dan Snyder. So Asians, send your thank-you letters to him, not me." The following day, a Twitter account for the program run by Comedy Central tweeted, "I am willing to show #Asian community I care by introducing the Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever" but did not link to the episode or provide context for the statement. This quickly led to people creating a #CancelColbert hashtag, which lasted until the following Monday's episode (March 31, 2014) when Colbert described the sequence of events, scolded Comedy Central for the poorly contextualized tweet, and criticized the offense-takers' haste in their CancelColbert campaign, also noting that Dan Snyder's charity named after Redskins was ironically not being protested. During the
2014 League of Legends World Championship group stage in
Taiwan,
Team SoloMid jungler
Svenskeren registered an account by the name TaipeiChingChong on the
Garena servers and was subsequently fined and suspended by
Riot Games. The incident was also criticized by the Taiwanese version of the newspaper
Apple Daily. emerged as a response to slurs such as 'Ching chong' in the United States after the COVID-19 outbreak. In August 2018, voters reported that Michigan state representative
Bettie Cook Scott urged her supporters, "don't vote for the ching-chong" in the primary election, referring to her opponent,
Stephanie Chang. She later issued an apology through a representative. She would lose the election and
de facto defaulted her seat after the apology until Chang's inauguration to a Michigan House office charged with representing the district's affairs in the interim period in her place. In November 2018, Filipino
Dota 2 player
Carlo "Kuku" Palad was banned from attending the Chongqing Major after typing "ching chong" during a live match against Chinese players. He eventually apologized, but did not get his ban lifted. This followed an earlier event when another Filipino player Andrei "Skemberlu" Ong used the same term during a match with a Chinese team a few weeks earlier. In December 2018, American rapper
Lil Pump was criticized after using the term in a teaser for his then-upcoming single "
Butterfly Doors", which also contained the lyric "They call me
Yao Ming 'cuz my eyes real low" with him slanting his eyes. He later was chided by several Asian and Asian-American rappers such as
China Mac and
Awkwafina. Lil Pump subsequently released an apology and edited out the lyrics from the official music video. In November 2022, German former professional
footballer Jimmy Hartwig was criticized after using the term in his commentary about the
Japan national football team on
WELT-TV for the
2022 FIFA World Cup. The WELT management company removed the video from
YouTube and Hartwig posted an apology on his
Instagram. In February 2025,
Queenstown, New Zealand hamburger bar
Fergburger apologised for identifying a customer on a shop receipt with stereotypical label
ching chang. The employee was later fired. In July 2025, the English singer
Liam Gallagher of
Oasis used the term "ching chong" in an
X post days before the kickoff of the
Oasis Live '25 Tour. This led to much backlash, especially from Asian accounts. He has since deleted the post and apologised. ==See also==