The new British foreign secretary didn’t exactly make the best impression upon his first official visit to China recently, referring to his Chinese wife as Japanese.

“My wife is Japanese — my wife is Chinese. That’s a terrible mistake to make,” Jeremy Hunt said to his counterpart, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi, during a meeting in Beijing. After confusing his own wife’s ethnicity, Hunt went on to boast about his familial connections to China, apparently still hoping to curry some favor from the Chinese government.

“My wife is Chinese and my children are half-Chinese and so we have Chinese grandparents who live in Xi’an and strong family connections in China,” he said.

"My wife is Japanese… my wife is Chinese, sorry!" – UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has an awkward moment as he starts visit to Beijing https://t.co/5p9PVnCuF9 pic.twitter.com/lhlxvLBZ6c — BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) July 30, 2018

Hunt married Lucia Guo in 2009, one year after they met through Hunt’s education business. At the time, Guo was working at the University of Warwick, helping to recruit Chinese students to the school. The two were married in a traditional Chinese ceremony in Xi’an, where Guo was born.

Guo is 11 years younger than her husband. They have three children together.

Hunt is taking over for Boris Johnson, who was known to make a gaffe or two, but this seems like one mistake that will stick with him for a while, both in China and at home.