Kylian Mbappe has lost two major commercial partners in China after a video spread online in which the French football star appeared to make a joke involving former Chinese leader Mao Zedong. In China, humor about Mao, the country's founding leader who died in 1976, is regarded as disrespectful and remains a social taboo.
Drinks company Dongpeng announced the split in a statement on Tuesday. "Our company firmly opposes and has a zero-tolerance policy towards any behaviour that offends national sentiments," it said, adding that "with immediate effect we are terminating all cooperation with Kylian Mbappe". Dongpeng had regularly run advertisements in China during this year's FIFA World Cup showing AI-generated images of the 27-year-old drinking its sports drink.
Mengniu, the largest dairy producer in China, also cut ties with the Real Madrid forward. In its own statement, the company said it "firmly opposes and has a zero-tolerance policy towards any words or actions that hurt the feelings of the Chinese people". Until the incident, Mbappe had been very popular among Chinese fans and had millions of followers on social media.
The video that triggered the backlash shows Mbappe saying the funniest internet meme he had come across featured his face digitally placed onto that of "some guy, I think he's a Chinese dictator". The remark seemed to refer to a meme that put the footballer's face on an image of Mao, one of several that use his face alongside other historical figures.
The topic "Dongpeng Beverage ends cooperation with Mbappe" became the most-discussed subject on Chinese social platform Weibo. One user wrote that the "extremely serious wrong remarks" had "crossed the red line" and were "completely unacceptable". Others called on Dongpeng to take Mbappe's image off its energy drink bottles. Chinese fans had affectionately nicknamed him "Guigui", meaning "turtle", because of his link to a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles meme.
Dongqiudi, one of the biggest football websites in China, said on Monday evening that his comments were "offensive to China and the Chinese people" and had "hurt the feelings of Chinese football fans and the Chinese people".
Mbappe had addressed a similar meme in September, which depicted him as a military dictator, in an interview with French sports newspaper L'Equipe. He said part of it was funny and that some people meant it in good fun, but another part was "a bit less funny because of the damage such people have caused throughout history". He added that being compared to people who murder others or bring misery to millions was something he had never done in his life.
The controversy arrived one day after Mbappe lost the Ballon d'Or, football's most prestigious individual prize, to Harry Kane.
It is not the first time a global sports figure has faced fallout in China over a sensitive subject. Former NBA player Dwight Howard drew anger on Chinese social media in 2023 after calling Taiwan a country in a video featuring the island's vice president at the time, William Lai Ching-te, now its president. Beijing claims Taiwan as its territory and has threatened force to take control. In 2019, Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey posted support for Hong Kong protests, prompting China to suspend NBA sponsorship deals and remove games from Chinese television for a year.