Kylian Mbappé struggled to contain a wave of anger on Chinese social media on Wednesday, despite apologizing for his remarks about Mao Zedong, which cost him several commercial deals in the huge Chinese market.
اضافة اعلان
Jokes about Mao, the founder of the People’s Republic of China who died in 1976, are considered offensive in China and remain socially taboo.
Several Chinese brands have suspended their partnerships with Mbappé, while Chinese state television has canceled broadcasts of Spanish football league matches.
The Real Madrid player apologized on Tuesday after saying that the funniest image of him circulating online was one in which his face had been digitally edited onto a picture of “a man, I think he’s a Chinese dictator,” in what appeared to be a reference to Mao.
The original joke made by Mbappé was not reposted on China’s heavily censored social media platforms, or may have been removed from them. Meanwhile, state media avoided any mention of Mao, saying only that the player had made “inappropriate remarks concerning China.”
However, the footballer continued to face a flood of criticism from Chinese users on Wednesday.
One user wrote on Weibo: “His remarks were offensive to China and the Chinese people, so they cannot be translated.”
At the same time, the Xiaohongshu platform suspended Mbappé’s account, which has more than one million followers, preventing him from gaining new followers.
The same measure was taken on the Weibo app, where a notification appeared stating: “Following this user is prohibited because they violated Weibo’s rules or community agreement.”
Chinese media reports said that global brands such as Dior and Hublot had removed content related to Mbappé from their Weibo accounts.
