China made Mbappé apologise - but many people don't know exactly what he said

China forced Mbappé to apologise - but many people still don’t know exactly what he said

On Monday night, while Kylian Mbappé was at the Ballon d'Or ceremony in London, he also became the focus of a major uproar on Chinese social media.

Football fans had come across a clip of him joking about the meme that makes him "laugh the most" - in which his face is placed on a "Chinese dictator" resembling Mao Zedong, who oversaw one of the bloodiest periods in the country’s history.

The backlash spread rapidly as Chinese brands dropped him one after another, and China Media Group, the parent company of state broadcaster CCTV, halted broadcasts of La Liga matches. A foreign ministry spokesperson said: "Words and actions that hurt the feelings of the Chinese people will naturally be met with joint opposition from all sectors of Chinese society."

Yet on the Chinese internet, few were directly naming those words and actions, or even mentioning Mao - who remains an almost sacred figure in the country.

China’s advanced censorship system, which blocks 1.4 billion people from the global internet, meant many people did not know precisely what had happened.

The charge of "hurting the feelings of the Chinese people" alone appeared enough to set off a wave of anger, boosted by social media algorithms and a tightly controlled internet, where users are cautious about challenging the dominant view.

It was not long before Mbappé, one of the world’s biggest football stars, said he was "sincerely sorry" for his "ill-judged" comment. His club, Real Madrid, and the Spanish league La Liga also apologised. China is a major market for the world’s most popular sport.

Beijing later said it was taking the footballer’s apology "seriously". China Media Group has still not said whether broadcasts will restart.

But the online anger remained.

"An apology is the least he should do, but I don't forgive him. I support a ban on him," read a top comment on Weibo.

Mbappé did not name Mao in the interview, but many believed any joke involving the founder of Communist China had crossed a line.

"Do you know who you hurt? He is the spiritual pillar of the Chinese people," read one Weibo comment that was liked by more than 700 users.

"He's the most important figure in our history. Do you think a simple apology can make everything okay?" another user wrote.

Weibo users shared the clip by blurring the meme and redacting references to Mao

Ironically, despite the intense backlash, many people on Chinese social media are still asking exactly what the French forward said. They turned to AI chatbots, which are just as censored as the Chinese internet and could not give any answers. Others tried to explain, but avoided mentioning Mao.

References were made to "the person on the 100 yuan note" and "the teacher", a title Mao once used for himself. Screenshots of the meme and interview were shared, with both the word "dictator" and Mbappé's face blurred out.

Neither the Chinese foreign ministry statement nor the apologies from Mbappé, Real Madrid and La Liga mentioned Mao directly.

Mao, who led the Chinese Communist Party to victory in the civil war and founded the People's Republic of China, died in 1976.

Despite the upheaval of his rule, including the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, which caused a famine that killed tens of millions and unleashed violent purges across Chinese society, he remains a revered figure in China.

It is illegal in China to "insult" or "slander" Communist Party martyrs and war heroes

A portrait of Mao looks out over Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, showing how central he remains in the modern Chinese imagination. Unlike other former Chinese leaders, his embalmed body is displayed publicly there, drawing tens of thousands of visitors every day. In recent years, interest in him has revived among young people, who read his writings and watch clips of him on social media.

Chinese history books minimise the devastation during Mao’s rule. The Chinese Communist Party’s judgment on Mao is that his achievements outweigh his mistakes. In their view, he is "a great revolutionary and a great Marxist".

Mbappé's Chinese social media Weibo account was banned from being followed by new users on Tuesday

Outside China, however, history views Mao as both a revolutionary and a dictator. As a result, reactions among the diaspora - dissidents as well as people whose families left China decades ago, in the wake of Mao’s rule - were very different.

"You don't need to apologise, you are not wrong," a highly liked comment written in Chinese under the football star's X statement read.

"The ones who should apologise are the CCP; they kidnapped the Chinese people and brainwashed them," another Chinese user wrote.

On X and Threads, neither of which can be accessed in China, the controversy produced even more memes. Some show Mbappé’s face on other images of Mao, while others go further and place him on the body of current Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Dairy company Mengniu, an official sponsor of the Fifa World Cup, cut ties with the footballer after the backlash

And then there was the rest of the internet, which was simply confused.

"It's honestly hard to understand... It seems like people aren't allowed to speak out against their leaders. And they expect the whole world to think the same way they do? That's ridiculous," read a top comment under Real Madrid's apology on Instagram.

"How dare you call a dictator a dictator? Terrible," another user on X wrote.