Aamir Khan denied permission by Chinese university to promote 'Thugs of Hindostan'

Beijing: The venue of a fan meet of Bollywood actor Aamir Khan was shifted to a hotel after a Chinese university denied permission to use its campus to promote his latest movie "Thugs of Hindostan", according to a media report. Khan is currently in China to promote "Thugs of Hindostan", which failed to register a strong performance in the Bollywood and was panned by the critics. The movie starring Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan and Katrina Kaif among others was released on November 8 in India and is slated to release in the country next week. The fan meet, which was to take place in Guangdong University of Finance and Economics (GUFE) in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province, was cancelled by the university over the failure to seek prior permission to use the campus, according to a media report, the Global Times reported. According to the Chinese media, the school did not know about the promotional event until Monday. "The message was spread only among a small group of students through social media. The school only knew about it when students talked about the event hours before it was about to take place," the report quoted an employee of the varsity as saying. However, the Weibo account that promotes Khan's films announced the school had cancelled the event "unilaterally" as the "the students were overly enthusiastic". The post angered many students, who said the university did not know about the event at all before Monday. Many students said they waited outside the event site for over an hour. "It is obviously the organiser's fault for not applying to the school to use an on-campus building,� net user Swim Xinzhu, a student from GUFE, said. "We have held similar events before and there would be no issue if the organiser had reported in advance," an employee of the varsity said. The organiser's deputy manager, a Beijing-based film-promoting company, reported the Weibo post by Khan's film account, saying they were contacting the film crew and the school to figure out what caused the poor communication. The fan meet was soon relocated to a Four Seasons hotel not far from the campus and ended at around 11 PM on Monday night, the report said. Khan is famous with his Dangal movie in China which was watched by President Xi Jinping. His other movie Secret Super Star has also become very famous in China raking up record box office earnings. PTI