Soccer Star Mbappé Called Mao 'a Chinese Dictator.' Within a Day, China Dropped His Sponsors and Pulled Spain's League Off State TV

Kylian Mbappé finished second for the Ballon d'Or, soccer's biggest individual award, on Monday. By Tuesday, China had started cutting him off.

His offense was one sentence about a meme. In a clip from The Bridge, a French talk show co-hosted by his Real Madrid teammate Aurélien Tchouaméni, Mbappé was asked which meme of his own face made him laugh the most. He picked one where fans had pasted his face onto "a Chinese dictator." The picture on screen was Mao Zedong.

Within about a day, three Chinese companies dropped him, China's state broadcaster pulled Spain's top soccer league, his Chinese social media accounts went silent, and the Communist government's Foreign Ministry weighed in.

What he actually said

Here is the line, in his own French, from the circulating footage of the show: "Celui où j'ai le plus rigolé, c'est quand on avait mis une vidéo d'un mec, je crois c'était un dictateur chinois." In English: "The one that made me laugh the most was when they put up a video of some guy, I think it was a Chinese dictator." He added that he uses it "beaucoup avec mes amis en ligne, pour la Play": a lot with his friends online, on PlayStation.

That's it. He never said Mao's name. He was laughing at a joke about himself. Mbappé's nickname in France is "the dictator," a running gag about how much pull he has over his clubs, and fans have been pasting his face onto history's strongmen for years.

China's answer

The pile-on started Monday night with Dongqiudi, China's biggest soccer app. In a statement it said Mbappé had made "inappropriate remarks involving China" and that "because his remarks involve harm to China and the Chinese people, we cannot translate them." Then it warned its own users not to cross the line in what they say. A soccer app refused to tell Chinese fans what a soccer player said, and told them to watch their mouths.

Tuesday morning, Dongpeng Beverage, whose electrolyte drink has Mbappé's face on bottles and buses across China, posted a stamped statement on Weibo.

Mengniu, China's largest dairy company, followed with the same "zero tolerance" language, and so did Milkground, the cheese maker it controls. None of the three said what Mbappé had done wrong.

Then the state stepped in. According to the state-run Global Times, news apps run by state broadcaster CCTV scrubbed his content, and its parent, China Media Group, suspended broadcasts of La Liga, Spain's top league, and of Mbappé's matches. His accounts on Weibo and RedNote were muted, with notices citing community rules. Dior, On and Hublot took their Mbappé posts off Weibo.

Asked about it by a reporter Tuesday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun gave the government's line, according to the ministry's own transcript: "Any rhetoric or action that hurts the feelings of the Chinese people will naturally be rejected across the sectors in China."

The part China won't translate

Here's what Dongqiudi wouldn't print: Mbappé was right. Mao was a dictator, and one of the deadliest in history.

His Great Leap Forward, a crash plan to collectivize farms and out-produce the West, set off a famine from 1958 to 1962. Scholars who have studied it estimate the dead at 30 million to 45 million people, from the U.S. Census Bureau demographer Judith Banister to the Chinese journalist Yang Jisheng, whose book "Tombstone" is banned in mainland China. Then came the Cultural Revolution, a decade of purges, beatings and killings. Even the Communist Party's own 1981 resolution on its history blamed Mao for it.

His face still hangs over Tiananmen Square, and the party still treats him as beyond question. So in China, calling Mao a dictator, even by accident and as a joke, costs you your sponsors.

We've seen this play before

In October 2019, Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey posted support for Hong Kong's pro-democracy protesters. CCTV pulled NBA games off the air, Chinese sponsors walked, and the league spent weeks trying to calm Beijing down. Morey deleted the post.

Same tools this time: brands with "zero tolerance," a state TV blackout, an online hashtag demanding an apology, and a government statement to make sure everyone gets the message. The difference is that this time the target never even made a political point. He told a joke and got the history right.

What's next

As of Tuesday, Mbappé and Real Madrid had not commented publicly. The Global Times is promoting a Weibo hashtag saying Mbappé "still owes an apology." The test now is whether one of the most famous athletes in the world apologizes to a Communist government for calling a dictator a dictator, or whether he stands on it.