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RESOU 热搜 | What’s Trending in China, Explained
Here, I briefly unpack the stories making waves on Chinese social media and share what stands out to me. Don’t miss an update: become a subscriber to Eye on Digital China today.
Oh oh oh, Mbappé, all those goals, yet you lost so many points on Chinese social media over the past 48 hours.
Following his 100th goal for Real Madrid during El Clásico and finishing second on Ballon d’Or night, French football player Mbappé is all the talk on Chinese social media — not for his achievements, but for what is seen as crossing a major red line in an online interview.
On Tuesday night, a text came in from Ruixin: “I am wide awake tonight and somehow witnessed live how the footballer Kylian Mbappé was getting blocked and totally canceled on Chinese social media for his comments about Mao Zedong over the past, like, three hours 😅”
I quickly grabbed my phone and saw the flood of Mbappé posts rapidly coming in, and it was clear that people were very cross with him.
Although it was already clear that this might not blow over any time soon, by early Wednesday morning it became painfully clear how the controversy had snowballed. Dongpeng Beverage Group (东鹏), one of the many Chinese companies that signed the famous sportsman as its brand ambassador, publicly stated that it was cutting all commercial ties with Mbappé. Soon, others followed.
Dongpeng Beverage Group (东鹏): the first in a string of companies to cut ties with French footballer Kylian Mbappé.
Mbappé’s fall from grace in China has been sudden and spectacular, like a major avalanche of backlash that unfolded in one night, and it can all be traced back to one segment of an interview the footballer previously did on a French YouTube show (The Bridge) that resurfaced online — initially through Reddit and X, and then on Chinese social media apps, like football platform Dongqiudi (懂球帝).
In that segment, when asked about his favorite meme, Mbappé replied that one of the memes he finds funniest is:
🗣️ “the one where they put my face on some guy, a Chinese dictator. That really makes me laugh, I use it with my friends all the time.”
The interview segment where Mbappé shares his favorite meme: his face photoshopped onto the face of a “Chinese dictator.”
The show, created by Mbappé’s Real Madrid teammate Aurélien Tchouaméni, added the image Mbappé referred to: his face photoshopped on a Mao propaganda visual. It’s part of a series of memes that emerged in 2024 in which Mbappé’s face is edited onto the faces of dictators.1
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Mbappé, Mao & the Backlash on Chinese Social Media
Mbappé, Mao, and the Joke That Shall Not Be Named
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Sotka Pujo
July 3, 2018 at 7:24 pm
So the jew communist are doing same thing they did in west.
Mickey D
July 7, 2018 at 8:28 pm
When I first found out about China’s infiltration of African countries, I believed part of the motivation was for Chinese to have someone to feel superior to, besides the Uighers.
When I first taught in China in 2009, I was very surprised to see how much Michael Jackson and Martin Luther King, Jr. were honored. And later I saw how the black atheletes like Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and Lebron James were adored! I can’t remember how many students had Kobe, James and Jordan for their English names. I even had a couple Obamas! But there is apparently a huge difference between black celebrities and black people they don’t know. When I play a song that featured a couple black musicians–really grooving–many students would laugh at how black they were. And some of the darker skinned students were nicknamed Obama. There were some that even laughed at how black Michael Jackson was in the short for “Thriller.” Girls especially, want to be as white as possible, and buy expensive whitening creams. But this article has shown me that the prejudice is deeper than color. It’s racism similar to what we see from lower class whites in the US. Because it’s common for foreign teachers to have better accommodations than Chinese teachers. Reason being, to keep the foreign teacher comfortable, reducing the culture shock, with the goal of the teacher staying a long time.
Uncle Tom
August 19, 2018 at 5:40 am
This article raises the issue of preferences. And that preferring any group over another does in fact amount to discrimination. In the United States it is appearing in public service and in university admissions as well as scholarships and “entitlement” programs. Yet every instance in which the party being discriminated against (in this instance Chinese university students) calls out the blatant discrimination against them, they are portrayed with random examples from unrelated incidents, as racist. These media tactics are abhorrent.