Beijing will not back down on its principles after a series of friendly matches between China's Under-20 team and local German sides were cancelled by the two nations, Chinese experts said.
"The German Football Association and the Chinese Football Federation have agreed, following talks, not to continue the series of friendly matches of the Chinese Under-20 team with teams of the southwest regional division," the German Football Association (DFB) said in a statement on Friday, Reuters reported Saturday.
The statement came after Tibetan separatists waved flags interrupting a friendly match between China's U-20 team and a German fourth-tier Southwest Regional League team on November 18.
The Chinese Football Association (CFA) called the incident "regrettable," noting the DFB failed to guarantee that similar events would not happen again. The CFA announced in November the Chinese team was leaving Germany as "China's State interests cannot be harmed."
In November 2016, soccer associations of both countries signed a five-year deal that would see German players, coaches and referees provide assistance to their Chinese counterparts, CGTN reported.
China views Tibet its core interest and will not tolerate behavior by other countries that hurts core interests.
Sport has been boycotted by politics in Germany, Fan Peng, a research fellow at the Institute of Political Science under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Sunday.
"They would rather sacrifice China's interests to earn domestic applause on 'ideological correctness,'" he said. "It has hurt our national feelings. We cannot compromise in handling their arrogance."
China's Under-20 team could play other friendly matches in other countries instead, an anonymous soccer fan in Beijing told the Global Times.
"I don't see much value in such games with German teams when China pays so much to arrange them," he said.
