More than two weeks after the Mbappé clip went viral in China, a new paper from a Washington-based think tank argues the fallout has been engineered, not emotional.
The Jamestown Foundation analysis, published on 10 November by researcher Shijie Wang, points to a statement from the Zhejiang provincial propaganda department, which criticised Real Madrid’s formal apology for offering “no internal accountability and no commitment to corrective measures” and called on the Spanish club to fold the People’s Republic’s political standards into its own management.
CCTV, which pulled La Liga off its channels on 26 October, has put the same message in different words. The state broadcaster said apologies were “an absolute prerequisite” for closing the row, and it would “listen to his words and watch his actions” from here.
Three apologies, blackout still on
Mbappé, Real Madrid and La Liga have all said sorry. The player called his comments “ill-judged” on 27 October; the club and the league followed within hours; and the day after that, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it took the apology “seriously”.
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Nothing has moved on air. Real Madrid’s 3-0 win over Racing Santander on 1 November did not appear on either of CCTV’s two sports channels, and China Media Group, which holds the La Liga rights, has not set a date for resuming coverage. Retailers have been told to strip Mbappé’s image from product packaging.
Sponsors moved first
The commercial side went quicker. On 27 October, energy-drink maker Dongpeng Beverage Group, dairy giant Mengniu and cheese brand Milkground each terminated their endorsement deals with the striker. Dongpeng’s statement said the company has “a zero-tolerance policy towards any behaviour that offends national sentiments”; Mengniu used near-identical wording.
The financial exposure for Real Madrid is not trivial. The club generates an estimated 10 to 15% of its merchandise sales in China, and La Liga’s international broadcasting rights were valued at €748m for the 2024-25 season, with China and the United States financing the bulk of that figure.
Pressure spreads to the French team
A week after the first sponsor exits, Beijing widened the target. On 6 November, La Nouvelle Tribune reported that Yangshipin, the streaming platform run by China Media Group, had removed multiple videos featuring the French national team, including goal compilations from France’s 1998 and 2018 World Cup victories.
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No Chinese body has published a reason for the deletions, and no sponsor of the French Football Federation has moved publicly. The sequence of pressure, from player to club, league and now national team, is the escalation Wang’s paper lays out: a pattern in which access to the Chinese market comes bundled with Party-defined political conditions.
As of the Jamestown paper’s publication on 10 November, China Media Group had given no timeline for returning La Liga to Chinese screens.
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