Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten refused to apologise to China on Tuesday over a satirical cartoon it ran about the deadly new coronavirus that stoked the ire of Beijing.
The cartoon, published on Monday, depicted a Chinese flag with the yellow stars normally found in the upper left corner exchanged for drawings of the coronavirus.
China's embassy in Denmark responded the same day and issued a statement calling the cartoon "an insult to China" that "hurts the feelings of the Chinese people".
The embassy said the cartoon crossed the "ethical boundary of free speech," and demanded that the paper and the cartoonist Niels Bo Bojesen "reproach themselves for their mistake and publicly apologise to the Chinese people."