This came as the Sports Federation and Olympic Committee of Hong Kong issued new protocols for local sports teams regarding things the teams should look out for when the Chinese national anthem and the city’s flag are used at international sporting events.

Ronnie Wong Man-chiu, the committee’s honorary secretary general, said on a radio program on Friday that team leaders may face serious penalties should they fail to follow the new guidelines.

Under the new guidelines, team leaders are required to alert team members immediately and lead the team members to use their hands to display the sign of ‘T’ for expressing objection to the error made and call for a halt to the proceedings for immediate correction.

The leader should also direct the entire team to leave the venue if there was no immediate correction, and they could only return when the issue was fixed, the guideline stated.

Meanwhile, Wong said if the national sports associations were at fault for not acknowledging the error during the events, the associations could suffer penalties, including suspension of their committee membership and government funding.

Wong also said if the host of the sporting event were the one making the mistake, local sports associations would file complaints to international sports bodies and request sanctions on the host from organizing future events.