Is this the most racist advertisement in recent history?

A black workman, slightly ill-shaven, and dirty from painting, flirts flirtatiously at a Chinese woman tending the washing machine.

As he leans for a kiss, she slips some washing powder into his mouth and pushes him into the washing machine, to the sound of loud wailing from within.

Once the wash cycle is over, a white-shirted clean-shaven Chinese man crawls out.

Welcome to a new advertisement for Qiaobi detergent - a cleaning agent that jokingly claims to actually 'clean' the colour of your skin.

The ad's scarcely believable racism has raised hackles online in China, with commentators criticising it as racist, and vulgar.

The ad claims to be based on an Italian detergent commercial campaign, with the same music and sound effects - but in that version, the person put in the washing machine is white and emerges as a muscle-bound black man.

In that ad, the words on the screen declare 'coloured is better'.

The slightly more - ahem - controversial Chinese commercial has run on TV and also been shown in cinema chains this month.

In China, dark skin is associated with too much exposure to the sun, which suggests manual labour and being of low class.

In 2008, before the Olympic Games, black people were rounded up by police in Beijing, on suspicion of being drug dealers.

Many bars also reportedly banned black patrons for the duration of the games.