Kylian Mbappe has been dropped by two major brands in China after a video circulated online in which the French football superstar apparently joked about former Chinese leader Mao Zedong. In China, jokes about Mao, the country’s founding leader who died in 1976, are considered disrespectful and remain a social taboo. Advertisements showing AI-generated images of the 27-year-old France captain drinking a Dongpeng sports drink were regularly shown in China during this year’s FIFA World Cup.
Mengniu, China’s largest dairy producer, also cut ties with the Real Madrid forward, who until this incident was hugely popular among Chinese fans with millions of followers on social media. Mbappe is fondly nicknamed “Guigui”, the Chinese translation of “turtle”, due to his popularity as a character in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles meme. The announcements came after a video emerged online with Mbappe saying the funniest internet meme he had seen was of his face digitally altered onto that of “some guy – I think he’s a Chinese dictator”.
This was an apparent reference to a meme of Mbappe superimposed on an image of Mao, one of several using the footballer’s face and other historical figures. One Weibo user said the “extremely serious wrong remarks … crossed the red line. They are completely unacceptable.” Others urged Dongpeng to remove Mbappe’s image from their energy drink bottles.
Dongqiudi, one of China’s biggest online football outlets, said in a statement on Monday evening that Mbappe’s remarks were “offensive to China and the Chinese people” and “have hurt the feelings of Chinese football fans and the Chinese people”. In September, Mbappe addressed a previous meme depicting him as a military dictator in an interview with French sports newspaper L’Equipe. You can tell that, for some people, it’s all in good fun.
But there is another part that’s a bit less funny because of the damage such people have caused throughout history,” he said. The furore in China came a day after Mbappe lost out to Harry Kane for the Ballon d’Or, the most prestigious individual award in football. Global sports stars who have commented on sensitive topics such as Taiwan, Tibet and Hong Kong have previously caused controversy in China and been dumped by sponsors there.
Former NBA player Dwight Howard referred to Taiwan as a country in 2023 as he appeared in a video with the island’s vice president and current President William Lai Ching-te, causing fury on Chinese social media. Beijing claims Taiwan is its territory and has threatened to use force to take control. Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey posted a tweet in 2019 supporting Hong Kong protests, leading to China suspending sponsorship deals with the NBA and pulling games off Chinese television for a year.
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