Mbappe crisis in China!

Discussions are growing after a video of Real Madrid's star French football player Kylian Mbappé talking about China's former leader Mao Zedong went viral.

Speaking on the French television program called The Bridge, Mbappe told one of the internet jokes that made him laugh the most. Stating that there is a man in the video, Mbappe said, "I think he is a Chinese dictator." he said. During his speech, the moment when Mbappe's face was placed on an image resembling Mao was also reflected on the screen.

Chinese beverage manufacturer Dongpeng and dairy products company Mengniu announced that they immediately terminated their commercial cooperation with the 27-year-old football player. The companies cited their zero-tolerance policies against words and behavior that hurt the feelings of the Chinese people as the reason for their decisions.

The debate that started with Mbappe's words went beyond individual sponsorship agreements and affected Spanish football. With the decision of Chinese state television to suspend La Liga broadcasts, the crisis that started over Real Madrid's star football player was also reflected in the broadcasting activities of Spanish football in China.

According to the statement of Chinese media The Paper, Chinese state television CCTV suspended the broadcast of La Liga matches. According to the state-owned newspaper The Global Times, CCTV's news applications will no longer contain content related to the French striker.

The crisis in question broke out just a day after Mbappe was overtaken by Harry Kane in the Ballon d'Or race, which is considered the most prestigious individual award in the football world.

Mbappe previously mentioned the montages that compared him to military dictators in an interview he gave to the French sports newspaper L'Equipe in September. In that interview, the star football player said, "One side of it is funny, you can understand that people do it for fun. But the other side is not that funny, because there is great suffering caused by these people in history. It is not nice to be compared to people who killed others or dragged millions of people into misery; I have never done such a thing in my life."

This is not the first time Western sports figures have touched on political or historical sensitivities in the Chinese market, leading to a commercial crisis. The Beijing administration has previously imposed harsh trade sanctions against athletes and institutions that cross the official line on issues such as Taiwan, Tibet and Hong Kong.

Former NBA player Dwight Howard caused great anger in China when he referred to Taiwan as a "country" in a video he shot with the island's vice president and current leader Lai Ching-te in 2023. In 2019, Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey's post supporting the Hong Kong protests caused China to suspend all corporate sponsorships with the NBA and remove match broadcasts from television screens for a full year.