Ren and daughter a few years back
Perhaps not content with making obscene amounts of cash, China real estate tycoon and prominent micro-blogger Ren Zhiqiang seems to be on mission to find more ways to be offensive this week.
Only a few days after calling CCTV “the dumbest pig in the world,” for suggesting that the country’s property developers might not be paying their fair share of taxes, the chairman of Beijing-based Hua Yuan Real Estate Group set off the country’s gay community by equating homosexuality with drug abuse.
From a report in the South China Morning Post,
China’s real estate tycoon and outspoken blogger Ren Zhiqiang seemed to have rubbed the nation’s gay community the wrong way by bluntly advising his daughter to “refrain from doing drugs and practising homosexual acts”.
Ren’s advice to his daughter, who at the time was turning 18, came under public scrutiny after his autobiography Elegant Ambition, scaled the bestseller charts in bookstores all over the country.
Ren’s statement drew widespread criticism from gay activists in China for suggesting that people were able to choose their sexual orientation.
In 2012, the outspoken Ren was ranked seventh on Sina’s Weibo micro-blogging service as of November, with close to 16 million fans.
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