La Liga Grovels to Communist China After Mbappé Calls Mao a Dictator
Spanish football bosses have issued a grovelling apology to Communist China after Real Madrid superstar Kylian Mbappé made the unforgivable mistake of describing the mass murderer dictator Mao Zedong as a dictator.
The French striker sparked outrage in China after laughing about how has become an internet meme.
In an interview with the French programme The Bridge, Mbappé was asked what his favourite meme of himself was.
“The one where they put my face on a Chinese dictator (Mao Zedong). That really makes me laugh, I use it with my friends all the time,” he said.
He was right.
Mao Zedong is under any single social metric a dictator. There was not a a single popular election during his lifetime when he ruled Communist China from 1949 until his death in 1976.
His Great Leap Forward campaign triggered a catastrophic famine estimated to have killed around 30 million people, while his Cultural Revolution unleashed years of political persecution and hyper-violence.
Historians reckon Mao was responsible for 40 million to 80 million people, primarily as a result of man-made famines, forced labour, and political purges.
But Chinese companies subsqeuently terminated lucrative sponsorship agreements with Mbappé, while the state broadcaster China Media Group suspended coverage of Spanish La Liga league matches.
How much freedom of expression is it prepared to sacrifice to maintain access to the Chinese market?
So did the Liga defend the right to describe a dictator as a dictator? No.
La Liga apologised.
“LALIGA deeply regrets the offense caused by Kylian Mbappé’s recent comments among Chinese fans. These comments were made in a personal capacity and do not represent LALIGA,” it said on X.
League president Javier Tebas met China’s ambassador to Spain, Yao Jing, and promised measures to prevent similar incidents, including new communication protocols for players and clubs.
“We cannot allow an individual action to tarnish that relationship or harm the more than 20 clubs in our professional competitions and millions of Chinese fans,” he said
“We are taking the measures within our reach and working directly with our partners and interlocutors in China to overcome this situation,” he added.
WHAT!
Mbappé himself apologised, calling his remarks ill-judged. Real Madrid followed suit on Wednesday.
The grovelling didn’t even work.
China confirmed to Spain’s news agency Agencia EFE it will not broadcast LaLiga and rejected Real Madrid’s explanations about Mbappé.
If calling Mao Zedong a dictator requires an apology, there is no historical truths any European sporting institutions will be prepared to defend?