Kylian Mbappe was dropped on Tuesday (October 27, 2026) by two major brands in China after a video circulated online in which the French football superstar apparently joked about former leader Mao Zedong.
Mengniu, China’s largest dairy producer, also cut ties with the Real Madrid forward, who until this incident was hugely popular among Chinese fans with millions of followers on social media. They are completely unacceptable”. “There’s a part of it that’s funny. You can tell that, for some people, it’s all in good fun.
Adverts showing AI-generated images of the 27-year-old France captain drinking a Dongpeng sports drink were regularly shown in China during this year’s World Cup. Because of the damage such people have caused throughout history,” he said, but there is another part that’s a bit less funny.
“Our company firmly opposes and has a zero-tolerance policy towards any behaviour that offends national sentiments,” drinks giant Dongpeng said in a statement, adding that “with immediate effect we are terminating all cooperation with Kylian Mbappe”. “With immediate effect our company is terminating all cooperation with Kylian Mbappe,” Mengniu said in a statement. One Weibo user said that the “extremely serious wrong remarks… crossed the red line. Dongqiudi, one of China’s biggest online football outlets, said in a statement on Monday evening that Mbappe’s remarks were “offensive to China and the Chinese people” and “have hurt the feelings of Chinese football fans and the Chinese people”.
Former NBA player Dwight Howard referred to Taiwan as a country in 2023 as he appeared in a video with the island’s vice president and current president Lai Ching-te, sparking fury on Chinese social media.
