Chinese authorities ‘arrest’ Ronald McDonald statue

CHINESE authorities weren’t lovin’ Ronald McDonald this week, hauling away a statue of the fast food mascot from a city store.

FILE - In this Thursday, July 31, 2014, file photo, a customer walks past a statue of Ronald McDonald on display outside a McDonald's restaurant in Beijing. McDonald's Corp. said Thursday, March 31, 2016, it plans to open 1,500 new restaurants in China, South Korea and Hong Kong as it looks to faster-growing markets to help drive a global turnaround. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File)

CHINESE authorities weren’t lovin’ Ronald McDonald this week, hauling away a statue of the clown that was blocking sidewalk foot traffic.

Uniformed code enforcement officers in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou ripped the Ronald McDonald figure off its base, leaving only his big red shoes behind, as shoppers in the Huadu District of commerce hub Guangzhou looked on in amazement on Sunday.

The city had been warning operators of the McDonald’s store that its statue was hindering pedestrian traffic, according to state newspaper the People’s Daily.

“We’ve asked them to remove the Ronald McDonald statue from the sidewalk several times but they have refused to co-operate,” a city official said.

“If the McDonald’s staff admit their violation and accept the punishment, they can have their statue back.”

Pictures of Ronald McDonald’s arrest have gone viral, and opened authorities up for mockery across China.

One user of the popular social media platform Sina Weibo wondered if Chinese authorities were acting under orders from a rival, powerful military figure named Colonel Sanders.

According US-based news site The Epoch Times, city law enforcement officials, or chengguan,

broke the Ronald statue at the ankles, leaving its oversized red shoes and green pedestal on the pavement.

The chengguan are known for their heavy-handed discipline tactics, with reports of the urban enforcers beating up real estate agents and even killing a small dog in front of its owner, who did not have registration papers for the pet.

The Times reported that, when asked by Yangcheng Evening News why animal statues on a pavement outside a shopping centre across the street weren’t also removed, the chengguan said: “We enforce the law fairly and we do not target any specific company.”