Chinese brands sever contracts with Mbappé over a joke about a 'dictator'

Kylian Mbappé found himself under boycott in China after a joke on the podcast The Bridge, in which he mentioned a meme combining his face with an image of a man he called the 'Chinese dictator.' Dongpeng and Mengniu terminated their contracts, their shares fell, CCTV removed advertising featuring the player, and the PRC Foreign Ministry commented on the incident. Mbappé issued an apology.

Otabek YusupovFirst published on tafs uz 31 October 2026 at 08:032 min read

The key facts

Contracts with Mbappé were terminated by Dongpeng, Mengniu and Milkground; Dongpeng shares fell 4.1%, Mengniu about 3%
CCTV removed advertising and stopped broadcasting matches involving the player; his Weibo and Xiaohongshu accounts were frozen
Mbappé apologized the same day, admitting the comment was inappropriate

What happened

The trigger was a clip from the French podcast The Bridge, in which Kylian Mbappé talked about the funniest meme about himself: a video in which his face was merged with an image of a man whom he said he had called the 'Chinese dictator.' The footballer did not utter the name of the former PRC chairman Mao Zedong, but in China these words were perceived as an insult to the founder of the modern state, reports Kun.uz.

Consequences for business and media

The first to announce the termination of contracts were the beverage maker Dongpeng (Eastroc) and the dairy giant Mengniu; then the cheese company Milkground also refused to work with him. Against this backdrop, Eastroc shares fell 4.1% on the Shanghai stock exchange, while Mengniu lost about 3% in Hong Kong. The boycott also affected the media sphere: according to available information, the CCTV channel pulled advertising featuring the player off the air, stopped broadcasting matches involving him, and deleted posts related to him from its Weibo account. Mbappé's official pages on Weibo and Xiaohongshu, where he has almost a million followers each, were flagged for violating the rules and were frozen. The sports portal Dongqiudi refused to translate the footballer's words, calling them offensive to China.

The authorities' reaction and the apology

On October 27, at a briefing, the official spokesperson of the PRC Foreign Ministry, Guo Jiakun, was asked about this conflict. He stated that words and actions that hurt the feelings of the Chinese people inevitably meet with the unanimous opposition of society as a whole, but the diplomat did not mention any specific measures. The same day, Mbappé apologized to everyone hurt by his words, admitting that the comment was inappropriate.