Red faces at Dell over Lenovo gaffe

There are some red faces over at Dell China this week.

According to China Daily, a Dell account manager identified only as Chris referred to Lenovo's recent acquisition as "directly supporting/funding the Chinese Government."

The comment was part of an e-mail to a customer posted on the Internet on May 27. The account manager was making note of the recent changes in ownership of IBM's legendary PC business.

"From an IBM perspective, please do not think I'm throwing stones," Chris said in the e-mail.

Lenovo completed its $1.75 billion purchase of IBM's "Think" brand of desktop, laptop and related technologies earlier this year making it the third largest seller of PCs behind Dell and HP.

Dell executives issued several apologies after the company issued statements saying they were sorry about the gaffe and reiterated that they were taking the appropriate actions. Translation: Chris, the account executive is probably looking for another job.

This is not the first time Lenovo has suffered the slings and arrows of its competitors. HP published an advertisement in a Taiwan newspaper back in February that read, "Don't even mention Lenovo." HP later apologized.

While there may be some consumer backlash, the incident is apparently ruffling the feathers of the Chinese government. China Daily said Wang Zhile, a senior multinational corporation development expert with a Ministry of Commerce research institute, warned that if Dell wanted to play the nationalism card, that the incident could negatively impact China/U.S. economic relations.