Diplomatic and measured, compared to the Chinese netizens and sponsors
I still don’t know what he said and what they said/did in reaction.
They interviewed him about his favorite meme was (in this day an age I would expect such a question but I still felt cringe when they asked him that) and Mbappe said that he liked the meme of Mao Zedong with Mbappe’s face photoshopped on it. He also referred Mao as a “dictator”. After he said that statement, a bunch of Chinese brands stopped sponsoring him in reaction. But he did apologize a few days later.
Oh I see. Sounds like rare win of brand pressure going toward a good cause. Based Chinese brands.
Also China has suspended all broadcasts of LaLiga matches (Spanish soccer championship) indefinitely because of his comment. His apologies didn’t reverse the decision as far as I know.
That’s a great case of FAFO.
This was the reaction from another commenter:
The narrative that has been constructed around this incident that it was the Chinese government that had a strong reaction is false.
And according to yourself:
Also China has suspended all broadcasts of LaLiga matches indefinitely because of his comment.
When the comments of a single football player mean that entire league cannot be shown indefinitely is absolutely a strong reaction, its the nuclear option.
I’m in the same boat. I’m only aware there was some controversy.
The narrative that has been constructed around this incident that it was the Chinese government that had a strong reaction is false. The backlash came overwhelmingly from private companies and regular Chinese netizens. It would be silly to try and tell Chinese people that they are not allowed to feel outraged over the insult of the single most important figure in their recent history.
Too many Westerners still think they understand China’s history better than the Chinese themselves. And this time that arrogance came with a cost.
Too many Westerners still think they understand China’s history better than the Chinese themselves. And this time that arrogance came with a cost. It is what it is. If you want to do business in China it is up to you to learn to respect Chinese sensibilities, or at least to have the humility to know not to speak on subjects you are woefully uninformed on.
Sounds like the thesis of Constructing China by Gao Mobo, he critiques often this western sensibility and this false dichotomy of democracy and authoritarianism, the false identification of western values with global values etc. I recall him supporting China when it comes to South China Sea.
It still has ultra left brain worms since they are Maoist
Actually, I remember them making an incorrect explanation of Marxism (specifically the part of it hating religion) in “The Battle of China’s Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution”, which is not a stance Marxists would take, so I doubt that they are Maoist: They seem more like a spicy liberal than anything.
Specifically on this one?
Religion and minority cultures: with a special focus on Tibet
As indicated above, modernity and the Enlightenment project have been attacking Chinese tradition for more than a century. As in any country, religious beliefs are an important part of tradition that has been under attack by modernity. On top of and as part of modernity, an important part of the Enlightenment project has been the Marxist ideology, which is known to have been hostile to religion.
Well, for starters, why wouldn’t Marxism be hostile to institutional religion, which was historically associated and often aligned with many a ruling class?
Secondly, this is more or less a criticism of enlightenment, not solely Marxism
Just to note, on this section, he doesn’t follow the western liberal narrative the GPCR tried to remove religion and tradition - a lot of that effort was mainly by Tibetan rebels over-correcting rather than by foreign Han Red Guards, loyalist or rebel. So, yeah, spicy liberal might fit or be stretching it
I will admit however, even in his later book, that his criticism of Deng as a capitalist roader and the post-Mao SWCC, may not hold up, but to call him liberal based on his explanation of enlightenment having anti-religious tendencies is weird.
It might be the quote, but I do not have the book anymore, so I am not sure (also it says “hostile to religion”, not specifically institutional religion).
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Quite ordinary. Given everything Comrade Mao did for PRC, it makes perfect sense for people to be protective of his legacy. Also if people think Chinese overreacted, they should never get involved with Turks lol
I am embarrassed of my people’s behavior both online and offline. That’s what you get if you try to create a nation in the most chauvinist way possible ig.
Chauvanism is insufferable by itself, but it being so unearned is what drives me up the wall. We never established cultural hegemony that lead to our language becoming a literary standard, we’ve made no significant scientific contributions until recently, even our modern literature isn’t that great, our dramas suck, we aren’t even actually independent… what the heck are we being chauvanistic over?
The state tries to claim everyone in the world descended from Turks instead of claiming the rich Anatolian identity and keeps propagandizing the past deeds of unrelated states instead of doing meaningful things today (I’d cut some slack to Atatürk on this; the guy was the only sane person of the cabinet, and he lived short). As a result of the decades of propaganda, the Turkish people became disoriented with a heavy identity crisis.
We still don’t have a solid answer to “What is a Turk?” The answer changes with each government.
Got into an argument with an old Turkish guy on a forum once who loved Ataturk and was a frothing racist/nationalist piece of shit because I called Ataturk a fascist. The guy went crying to mods about everything I said about Turkey/Azerbaijan no matter how insignificant and even though mods didn’t like me even they did fuck all because the stuff the guy was reporting me for were nothingburgers.
Like when I started talking shit about Baku and the guy was trying to argue I wanted to destroy the city and kill everyone in it and a mod had to explain to him that in English a capital city is often used as shorthand for a government. He was very easy to provoke because he hated Kurds and Armenians and actually got slapped by moderation for making a public list in which he put everybody he knew to be Kurdish/Armenian marked as his “enemies” - including many people he’d never even interacted with.
He was practically ejaculating when the Azerbaijan reignited the Artsakh conflict and was quick to call everybody sympathetic with Armenia a racist Turcophobe and fascist and totally crashed out when you pointed out how genocidal and racist Azerbaijan and its government is. The guy was a complete nutter and I remember another Turkish guy I knew flat out said he refused to interact with the guy because of how insane he was.
Man was deeply unwell.
Many people in Turkiye worships Atatürk and hurl slurs at you if you slightly criticize him. The reasons are long, but the least I can say is the Muslim fundamentalists’ constant attack on Atatürk just deepens the wound.
For a proper revolution, we must destroy the idol of Atatürk and revive the man he was with his rights and wrongs.
It may be funny for westerners to meme Mao, but in China he is a much more real figure and so people have genuine reverence for his accomplishments and how they massively improved their lives, and thus find memes like this disrespectful. Chinese tend to generally see communism as much more of a serious endeavor and thus are less likely to see memes and jokes about it as appropriate. For example, the communist youth league in China even received backlash when they proposed the idea of introducing official vtubers as representatives. People thought it was very unserious and so it was heavily criticized it until they cancelled it. You are much less likely to see the kinda of communist memes and such in China as you do outside of China because the communist revolution is much more real to them so they take it more seriously with more reverence and interpret those kind of memes as mockery and offense. You have to keep that in mind when interacting with a Chinese audience.
That western dweebs will have to fire a neuron before blurting out “mao dictator” is very funny
I neither think what he said was funny or appropriate and i don’t get any right to talk about how the government or their citizens reacted, but i think a lot of social capital was burnt over the entire thing. And that is one thing i am not sure about.
