Editor's note: this story was translated from the original VOA Mandarin article.
France and Real Madrid soccer star Kylian Mbappé is facing a backlash in China after commercial sponsors cut ties with him over comments he made about China's founding leader Mao Zedong.
In a recent interview Mbappé described finding a meme—which photoshopped him onto an image resembling that of Mao and referred to it as a "Chinese dictator."
Mbappé has since issued a public apology for his comments as Chinese brands dropped Mbappe and a broadcaster suspended broadcasting Spain's La Liga matches.
In an apology issued on Tuesday in both Chinese and French, Mbappé said that his comment during a recent interview was “ill-judged”, adding that he now understands that it hurt "many people in China and in Chinese communities around the world."
A U.S. congressional committee on China said Mbappé should not have apologized for calling Mao Zedong a "dictator."
The U.S. House Select Committee on China posted a statement on X, saying that Mao Zedong "was indeed a dictator, and the harm he inflicted upon the Chinese people was far more severe than anything a soccer player might say."
The committee, chaired by Congressman John Moolenaar (R-MI), followed up with a repost of a video it recently created about the Cultural Revolution, which Mao launched 60 years ago, calling it “one of the darkest chapters in Chinese history”.
Former Turkish American basketball player and rights activist Enes Kanter Freedom also suggested he disagreed with Mbappe's apology.
“I'm not here to judge Mbappe for apologizing. I don't know what pressure he faced,” Freedom told VOA Tuesday. “But you know, when athletes feel they have to choose between their principles and their careers, we have a serious problem. So that's why I think it's a shame that he came out and apologized because Mao Zedong is a dictator.”
The Meme and the Backlash
A video clip from an interview with Mbappé on the French show The Bridge has been circulating on social media platforms since Monday. When asked which meme featuring his likeness is the funniest, Mbappé mentioned one where his face is superimposed onto an image of a "Chinese dictator."
Mbappé did not name the character by name, but the show’s post-production team inserted an image of his face superimposed onto a portrait of Mao, implying that he was referring to Mao, triggering the backlash in China.
The following day, several Chinese enterprises—including beverage company Dongpeng, dairy producer Mengniu, and cheese maker Milkground, moved to terminate all partnerships with Mbappé, saying they had "zero-tolerance" policy toward "words and actions that hurt the feelings of the Chinese people". The official China Central Television (CCTV) began suspending all broadcasts related to the Spanish football league LALIGA and matches involving Mbappé, and all advertisements featuring him have been pulled.
Mbappé, the 2026 World Cup Golden Boot winner currently plays for Real Madrid in Spain. He helped France win the 2018 World Cup and scored a hattrick in the 2022 World Cup final. Mbappé is considered one of the most influential and commercially valuable soccer players in the world today. Until this week's incident, he had multiple lucrative sponsorship deals with Chinese companies.
Spain's premier league football known as La Liga has issued an official apology to China over Mbappé’s comment on Tuesday. Real Madrid issued a similar apology Wednesday.
Asked about Mbappe's apology during a regular press briefing in Beijing Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said: "We take seriously the apology that the person has made."
Great Leader or Deadly Dictator?
Mao Zedong who led China from 1949 until his death in 1976 is revered in China as the “Great Leader” and the main founder of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People’s Republic China. In the 1980’s, Chinese authorities, in their attempt to launch reforms and break away from the Cultural Revolution era, once acknowledged some “serious mistakes” made by Mao. However, the current leader Xi Jinping has publicly expressed his admiration for Mao and called him a "great patriot and national hero of China in modern times."
Mao’s critics in China and abroad view him as one of the deadliest dictators in human history. In its X post, the U.S. House Select Committee on China alleged that Mao's "dictatorship and disastrous policies killed tens of millions of Chinese people in the Cultural Revolution, the Great Famine, and other atrocities.”
The committee’s post added: “The real disgrace in this news story is the companies rushing to apologize so they can continue to do business in China. The CCP is the largest oppressor of the Chinese people and their human rights, and those businesses that work with the CCP help normalize its crushing brutality.”
No isolated incident
Mbappé is not the first sports figure to face varying degrees of censorship or boycotts in China due to their public comments.
Ironically, it was a former Real Madrid and Arsenal star, Mesut Özil who, through social media post, criticized Chinese government policies and the detention of Uyghurs in Xinjiang in December 2019. Özil left Arsenal in 2021 to joint Turkish club Fenerbahçe though it's unclear whether it was related to the comments he made about China.
Freedom himself faced similar problems when he criticized Chinse communist party in October 2021. After making remarks on social media and during games that were critical of Chinese actions in Tibet, Xinjiang, and Taiwan, broadcasts of games featuring his then-team, the Boston Celtics, were halted in China. Chinse platforms such as Tencent Sports also scrubbed all videos and merchandise related to him.
Chinese companies also suspended broadcasting NBA games after two NBA-related incidents involving the former General Manager of the NBA’s Houston Rockets, Daryl Morey, and former LA Lakers star Dwight Howard in 2019 and in 2023. The suspensions cost the NBA millions of dollars in revenue from broadcasting rights.
VOA Mandarin’s Stella Hsu contributed to this article.