Memes, Mao and Mbappé: Chinese brands drop soccer star in fury over ‘dictator’ joke

NBC News reports: Morning Rundown: High turnout in Israel's election, a setback in Trump’s efforts to block votes in California, and key takeaways from Anthropic's IPO filing There are no new alerts at this time HONG KONG — He’s one of the world’s most popular athletes, but Kylian Mbappé is suddenly paying the penalty for being on the wrong side of China ’s fervent nationalism. The French soccer star’s own goal?. Suggesting that Mao Zedong , the founding leader of communist China, was a dictator, in comments that revolved around memes portraying Mbappé as an authoritarian figure.

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