By Jessie Yeung, CNN
(CNN) — What do French soccer star Kylian Mbappé and the Japanese company behind Hello Kitty have in common?
Before this week, very little. Now, they share the unenviable position of having angered Chinese fans and consumers – then having to quickly apologize and do damage control, with big earnings on the line.
It’s not the first time this has happened. In recent years, other foreign brands and prominent figures, from athletes to fashion houses, have found themselves in hot water. But this week’s back-to-back backtracks illustrate how difficult it can be to do business in China – where once you cross a perceived red line, people aren’t so quick to forgive and forget.
It started when Real Madrid forward Mbappé appeared in a video posted by a French talk show, discussing a funny meme where his face had been photoshopped onto “some guy – I think he’s a Chinese dictator.”
That “guy” was former Chinese leader Mao Zedong – who, despite a tumultuous reign that saw tens of millions of deaths caused by disastrous policies, is still revered as the father of the People’s Republic. Half a century after his death, this complicated legacy is still a highly sensitive topic within China.
Mbappé’s throwaway comment immediately lit a firestorm on Chinese social media, one which swiftly traveled offline. Multiple brands cut ties with him, saying they had “zero tolerance for any words or actions that hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.” State media removed all content and ads involving Mbappé – who came second this week in the Ballon d’Or vote for the world’s top men’s player – and halted broadcasts of all matches and events involving him and Spanish football league La Liga.
Facing the threat of further repercussions, Mbappé issued a formal apology on Tuesday. “My comment was ill-judged, and I now understand that it hurt many people in China and in Chinese communities around the world,” he said in a statement. La Liga and other brands affiliated with Mbappé also sought to reverse the damage, emphasizing how much they valued and respected their Chinese partners.
Before the furor had even died down, another was beginning – this time over Hello Kitty maker Sanrio.
The company had collaborated with Japanese spy drama VIVANT to create merchandise based on Sanrio characters – including Hello Kitty, My Melody, Kuromi and Cinnamoroll – wearing outfits from the TV show. But the show had been called anti-Chinese by China’s state media amid ongoing geopolitical tensions, and the collaboration went viral on Chinese social media, where users lambasted the series for depicting Chinese intelligence agents torturing Japanese spies.
By Thursday, Sanrio had backtracked, saying it had “received feedback from various parties.”
“Regarding this collaboration, we believe that it contains expressions that are inconsistent with Sanrio’s corporate values. We have therefore decided to discontinue this collaboration, along with all subsequent projects and promotional activities,” it said in a statement posted both on its website and on Chinese social media platform Weibo, where a hashtag about the apology racked up more than 180 million views.
Even Chinese officials weighed in. VIVANT “once again exposes the fact that there has always been a force within Japan that seeks to vilify and smear China through cultural products and spread anti-China sentiment,” said Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Guo Jiakun in a regular press briefing on Thursday.
In both cases, Sanrio and Mbappé followed a now-familiar pattern for anyone who has caused offense on Chinese social media: apologize deferentially; retract statements; discontinue controversial products; and hope it will blow over. The same sequence unfurled with Dolce & Gabbana in 2018; Versace in 2019; the Houston Rockets, and by extension the NBA, in 2019; H&M and Nike in 2021; Bulgari in 2023; and Lululemon just earlier this year.
The controversies range across various topics, but many concern geopolitical or historical sensitivities, such as the status of Hong Kong and Macao as semi-autonomous regions of China, or the status of Taiwan, the self-governing democracy that Beijing views as part of its territory. Other controversies, such as the Lululemon and Sanrio ones, were fueled by historical animosity between China and Japan, with anti-Japanese sentiment gaining traction in China in recent years as bilateral ties worsen.
Foreign brands or celebrities doing business in China have to tread carefully because “the Chinese consumer is hyper-sensitive to any slights or perceived slights or attacks on the Chinese country and on the Chinese people,” said Shaun Rein, founder and managing director of the China Market Research Group.
“Brands have to be cautious, and they’re getting more and more so because they hire consultants and internal executives who understand historical problems and geopolitical sensitivities,” he added.
This heightened online sensitivity has coincided with surging ultranationalism in recent years, as well as China’s increased assertiveness in foreign policy and territorial conflicts. Ironically, on China’s highly censored social media platforms, many outlets have not explicitly spelled out Mbappé’s comments – leading many Chinese people to wonder what he had said in the first place to hurt their feelings.
But for many brands, it’s worth the risk to access China’s enormous consumer market. Sanrio China reported revenue of $117 million in the first half of 2026 alone, according to Chinese state media. The same goes for sports stars who rely on lucrative endorsements – especially in a nation already mad about basketball, and hungry for soccer.
Though Western sports leagues and teams can’t publicly warn their players to avoid angering China – and risk sparking a different sort of backlash – that may well happen behind the scenes, according to sports analyst Mark Dreyer, who wrote a 2022 book about China’s sporting ambitions.
“That’s just sensible business practice, particularly if you have multi-million dollar sponsorships on the line,” he told Reuters.
Some controversies die down relatively quickly, and brands recover. Other times, the damage can be long-lasting – and expensive. Years after a series of racially controversial ads and offensive private messages allegedly sent by a co-founder, Dolce & Gabbana is still a label non grata in China. And after the Houston Rockets general manager voiced support for the Hong Kong pro-democracy protest movement in 2019, China severed ties with the NBA and banned all teams from playing in the country, despite copious apologies, until they were finally allowed to return last year.
It’s not clear how long the road to recovery will be for Sanrio and Mbappé. But “these are the stakes of playing in China,” said Zak Dychtwald, founder of Bridgeworks Global, which advises multinational organizations.
“When it goes well, everybody celebrates. And it’s the second largest economy on earth and most often your biggest growth segment for whichever company and industry you’re in,” he told Reuters. “But when you get it wrong, it could be extraordinarily painful and swift in its retribution.”
The-CNN-Wire
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