Mbappe's 'Dictator' Meme Joke Triggers Total China Blackout
By @sharedot · · 7 pages
- Culture
- Memes
- Football
- China
- Kylian Mbappe
A viral meme joke cost Kylian Mbappe his Chinese sponsors and broadcasts, yet the BBC reports most Chinese never learned what he actually said.
One Meme, One Sentence, A Market Implodes
On the French online talk show 'The Bridge', Real Madrid's Kylian Mbappe named his favourite meme of himself — an image compositing his face onto a photo of Mao Zedong — calling it a picture of 'some guy — I think he's a Chinese dictator', as the pack's reports describe.
The clip, which The Daily Star notes Reuters could not authenticate, surfaced on Monday and detonated within a day.
Chinese brands including dairy giant Mengniu, Shanghai Milkground and Eastroc Beverage announced they were ceasing all cooperation with the France captain effective immediately, saying they have 'zero tolerance for any words or actions that hurt the feelings of the Chinese people'.
China's state television, per The Daily Star citing The Paper, halted broadcasts of all LaLiga and Mbappe matches and stripped every Mbappe advertisement.
Why the Backlash Is a Cultural Story, Not Just Sports
In China, satire about Mao — the country's founding leader who ruled from 1949 until his death in 1976 — is a social taboo, which is why a throwaway joke about an internet meme became a national incident.
The Daily Star quotes state outlet China Daily calling it 'a sharp reminder of the limits of celebrity influence' for a star whose ties run from On Holding and Accor to Lego.
The Star adds that On, which signed Mbappe as a global ambassador only weeks earlier, reportedly scrubbed all references to him from its Chinese social accounts, while a Lego Mbappe set still appeared on Lego's Chinese website.
He joins a lineage of brands and organisations that previously ran afoul of Chinese sentiment, among them Dolce & Gabbana, Swatch and the NBA.
The Video and the Apologies That Followed
The episode turned on a talk-show clip, as the pack describes it: Mbappe describing the funniest meme of himself as one showing his face on 'a Chinese dictator', with the Mao composite displayed on the broadcast screen. What followed was a cascade of contrition.
Mbappe apologised in a trilingual statement — French, Chinese and English — saying 'My comment was ill-judged, and I now understand that it hurt many people in China and in Chinese communities around the world.'
BBC's Twist: Most Chinese Never Heard the Remark
Here is the reversal the niche will be talking about: the BBC, as reported by StarNews Korea, points out that 'the majority of the people didn't even know what he said' in what the outlet frames as a 'bizarre farce'.
According to the BBC's account, strict internet censorship meant many Chinese could not learn the full details; StarNews reports that netizens who asked AI chatbots about the incident were blocked by government filters and received no answer at all.
Even the outrage was euphemised — posters referred to 'the person on the 100th-yuan bill' instead of Mao's name, and the offending composite image was shared so heavily mosaicked it was barely recognisable, all to evade detection systems.
The BBC also notes that dissidents and overseas Chinese defended Mbappe, while netizens abroad spread new memes compositing Xi Jinping's face.
What Comes Next for Mbappe and His Market
As of 0700 GMT on Tuesday, four Mbappe topics still sat among Weibo's top 10 trending searches, with some netizens calling for him to be 'blacklisted' and his commercial value driven to zero, The Daily Star reports.
Beijing has signalled acceptance of the climbdown: The Star quotes Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun saying China 'values the apology made by the person concerned', and Tebas wrote that 'a relationship built over so many years cannot be damaged by a single episode'.