Images of a banner in Shenyang, China, with the message “eagerly celebrating the pandemic in the United States and wishing the pandemic in little Japan to last for a long time,” have garnered an outpouring of anger.

Local citizens posted to Twitter images of the inflatable banner outside the “Mother Yang Porridge Shop” celebrating the COVID19 coronavirus on March 22, generating outrage in Japan.

“The Chinese Communist Party, which conceals the facts and rules with power, and the people under its control,” journalist Kadota Ryusho tweeted. “Did you even forget that it was a virus that you scattered? That’s horrible.”

中国・瀋陽の飲食店が「米国の感染状況を熱烈に祝う。日本での感染が順調に長続きしますように」との赤い横断幕を掲げた。日本に対しては"小日本"という蔑称を使っている。事実を隠蔽し強権で支配する中国共産党とその支配下にある人民。自らが撒き散らしたウィルスである事すら忘れたのか。恐ろしい。 https://t.co/RTtXAXJBQU

— 門田隆将 (@KadotaRyusho) March 24, 2020

Many others felt upset that elements in China were celebrating the pandemic in Japan even after Japanese citizens, governments at all levels and corporations donated millions of masks to China when Chinese doctors were running out of masks^[1]https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/03/09/mask-diplomacy-how-coronavirus-upended-generations-of-china-japan-antagonism/.

“This is what we get for donating million masks to these ungrateful communists,” one Tweet read. “It’s impossible to get along with these guys.”

“This cannot be forgiven,” another read. “ If China’s hiding is the only way to spread the infection, it is impossible to know. It is also proof that only the manipulated information is flowing. It is proof that the Communist government has no international sensitivity. I want the business community with a profit-first principle to have a chance to think about it.”

Others took to humorously insulting China’s leader.

“If you ridicule it as Small Japan,” Yousuke Uchiyama tweeted. “We will ridicule it as a small emperor Xi’s concealment.”

New services in China reported that the banner was taken down on March 23 after the officers from the local police station conducted an investigation.

COVID19 has claimed the lives of at least 400 people in the US and more than 50 in Japan.

There are 334,981 confirmed cases of the Wuhan coronavirus globally with an official death toll of 14,652 with the disease now having been reported in 190 countries or territories.