Beijing Targets Soccer Star Mbappe to Distract From Economic Woes: Analyst

Beijing is turning soccer star Kylian Mbappe into a nationalist target to distract from economic woes and bury words it fears could catch on and threaten its rule, analysts say.

Javier Tebas, president of Spain’s top professional soccer league La Liga, said on X on Oct. 28 that he has met with Chinese Ambassador Yao Jing to find solutions to the controversy surrounding Real Madrid’s French forward.

Guo Jiakun, a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, claimed at a regular press briefing on Oct. 27 that any rhetoric or action that “hurts the feelings of the Chinese people will naturally be rejected across the sectors in China.”

Tseng Chien-yuan, an adjunct associate professor at Taiwan’s National Central University, said the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is “using nationalism, or patriotism, to divert attention from China’s economic and social problems and stir up tension with the outside world.”

Tseng said the aim is to force the public to back the regime, a “well-worn political trick” in the Party’s playbook.

“It pulls people’s focus away from the real problems they face and toward national pride,” he told The Epoch Times.

China’s urban jobless rate for people aged 16 to 24, excluding students, stood at 18 percent in September, up from 17.7 percent a year earlier, according to data the country’s National Bureau of Statistics released on Oct. 21.

Tseng said many Chinese people likely “have no idea what happened,” because their priority is simply getting by, yet Beijing is passing off the Party’s own grievance as theirs.

Under a Chinese social media post condemning Mbappe, one user complained that despite all the criticism, no one had made clear what he said.

Another replied, “Because what he said is the truth.”

A third wrote, “All I can think about is that I’m nearly starving to death, so people can say whatever they want,” according to a screenshot from an Oct. 30 article in The Epoch Times’ Chinese-language edition.

Frank Tian Xie, the John M. Olin Palmetto chair professor of Business and Marketing at the University of South Carolina–Aiken and an expert on China’s business landscape, said the regime’s response reveals how deeply it fears dissenting voices.

“Mbappe has a huge following in China. If his remark became widely known or accepted, it would pose a grave threat to the Party’s grip on power,” Xie told The Epoch Times.

Mbappe apologized in an Oct. 27 post on X, writing in French, Chinese and English that his comment was “ill-judged” and that he now understood it had hurt many people in China and in Chinese communities around the world.

Remaking Mao 

Yet Bilibili, a Chinese social platform whose users average around 26 years old, has long been awash with posts glorifying Mao.

“In the 1980s, under then-leader Deng Xiaoping, the official line stopped putting Mao on a pedestal. The Party even admitted he made mistakes,” Tzeng told The Epoch Times.

“But under Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Mao’s image has been remade, so it’s no surprise young people back him to some degree.”

Where Deng judged Mao “70 percent right and 30 percent wrong,” Xi, who took power in 2012, has defended the Mao era. In January 2013, he said the decades of rapid growth after Mao’s death must not be used to discredit that era, and vice versa.

Xie said Mao’s appeal in China stems entirely from CCP “propaganda and brainwashing” and is bound up with the country’s economic malaise.

“Chinese people, especially those 65 and older, wrongly believe that under Mao, everyone was equally poor and officials were at least cleaner than they are now,” Xie told The Epoch Times.

“With growth this weak, many miss Mao’s call to strike down the landlords, and today’s landlords are the Party’s elite.”

Weighing the Cost 

Two Chinese companies, drinks maker Dongpeng Beverage and dairy giant Mengniu Dairy, ended their partnerships with Mbappe on Oct. 27. The deals were worth about 50 million yuan ($7.5 million) combined, according to French newspaper Le Monde.

Mbappe is not the first to face such a backlash in China.

However, Tzeng Wei-feng said Beijing’s political red lines may not deter international businesses.

“Profit comes first. If they can steer clear of Chinese politics, they will,” he said.

“Mbappe’s endorsement fees show how much money there is to be made in China. No business would give that up.”

Offering a contrasting view, Tseng Chien-yuan said that after the Mbappe case, international businesses will weigh whether appeasing Beijing by compromising their core values could cost them in other ways.

“If companies abandon their conscience and principles for the sake of the Chinese market, consumers may boycott them,” he said.

“For example, any company that still backs Xinjiang cotton today risks being seen as an accomplice in the CCP’s abuses against the Uyghurs.”

Tseng said multinationals now believe they can recoup sales lost to Beijing’s political red lines, for instance by passing on costs, but cannot bend on what they stand for.

“Once a company’s overall image is damaged, it becomes part of the public’s collective memory,” he said.

“Trading reputation for the Chinese market is a bad bargain. Sooner or later, companies will pull out.”