China World
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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
The French Protests, Viewed from China: Five Narratives on Chinese Social Media
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Richard Merlin
June 24, 2022 at 5:02 am
The characters on the blackboard are traditional Chinese characters, which have been replaced by simplified characters on the Chinese mainland since the 1950s but remain in use in Taiwan and Hong Kong. People from mainland China of “Shushu”s age will not write that way.
His accent is typical Taiwan while Lu Ke has a Jiangsu or Zhejiang accent. It would be inconceivable for Lu Ke who makes a living filming in Africa to make such a disgusting, offensive and politically incorrect (in both China and Africa) film to destroy his own business AND himself.
The Chinese people have been extremely sympathetic for the African people. After all, the Chinese have been discriminated against, abused, exploited, and bullied by Western powers like the African people for almost two centuries.
The Chinese government has been sending aid to Africa since the 1950s, totally trillions of dollars even while the Chinese people were suffering from hunger en masse themselves. For emotional reasons and cold calculation, the Chinese government won’t tolerate anything that will undermine its huge investment in Africa.
In conclusion, this appears highly likely to be part of special operations by Taiwan’s intelligence agency to smear the Chinese people and to poison relations between Africa and China at the same time.
Chinese as well as people from all over the world of all political conviction and affiliation should do everything they can to expose and condemn such evil and hideous smearing attempts against all Chinese people.
黑板上写的都是繁体字，这个年纪的大陆人不会写繁体字。卢克的口音是典型的江浙口音。可领着小朋友们喊侮辱性口号的“叔叔”的口音明显是台湾人。卢克再愚蠢，也不会拍那种极具侮辱性的视频自断财路甚至自掘坟墓，而且拍了以后竟然还胆敢留在当地。推测很可能是台湾军情局的杰作 – 一方面败坏中国人的国际形象，同时离间中非关系。全世界的华人中国人无论何种政治信仰，无论身在何处，都应团结起来，揭露声讨谴责这种极其卑劣的、败坏全体中国人华人国际形象的无耻恶行。