Sports | Comrade Mao's bloodshed

Kylian Mbappé lost several advertising partnerships in China. Photo: Johannes Neudecker/dpa China's leadership is raging and the French soccer superstar Kylian Mbappé, striker for the Real Madrid soccer club, is losing his advertising deals in China. Games in which he appears will no longer be broadcast on state television. What happened? Mbappé was asked in a podcast what his favorite meme was. A meme is a funny Internet image, often a photo montage. The respondent replied that a meme with a "guy" who he believed was a "Chinese dictator" with his face photomontaged made him laugh the most. What was meant was the Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong.

Ouch, bad foul, whistles the Chinese Communist Party from the sidelines. Critical content, let alone humorous depictions of Mao, are a no-go in China. The statement itself that Mao was a dictator is factually completely correct. Even for hardened Maoists, it should be undisputed that the great helmsman was a dictator - just a good one. Because of the dictatorship of the proletariat and all that...

It's not about the historical Mao, but about his role in today's China. The real Mao deserves some criticism. The former bookseller brought the communists in China to the brink of collapse several times. Imperial Japan's attack alone saved the communists from annihilation at the hands of Chiang Kai-shek. The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were also great victories solely in their own propaganda.

But as an identity-forming projection surface for the heroic main character of the founding myth of the Chinese state, he lives on as a kind of patron saint. And woe betide anyone who laughs at a meme from this patron saint – Mao blasphemy!

This actually atheistic state is no joke, as its ritualized worship of Mao, including the proverbial mummy worship, is strongly reminiscent of old religious practices. Mbappé also had to realize this, which is why the Frenchman immediately apologized to all Chinese people for his words. This hasn't achieved anything yet.

It is not the first time that China has used its market power to force desired behavior from Western stars or companies. In 2019, American basketball star Lebron James publicly opposed the manager of his club at the time, who dared to publicly show solidarity with the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

China's market power is noticeable for poor Western multimillionaires and sports stars. The collapse of Western international cultural hegemony would be more gratifying if the example by which it breaks were not accusations of lese majeste through Mao memes.

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