Actor and professional wrestler John Cena issued an apology to China for referring to Taiwan as a country during a promotional interview.
Cena, 44, apologized on Tuesday in Mandarin on the Chinese social media network Weibo for making the reference to Taiwan as a country, which many Chinese people view as an insult due to China’s long-held view that Taiwan is a breakaway province and not an independent country.
“I made a mistake,” Cena said. “Now I have to say one thing, which is very, very, very important: I love and respect China and Chinese people.”
Cena continued: “I’m very sorry for my mistakes. Sorry. Sorry. I’m really sorry. You have to understand that I love and respect China and Chinese people.”
https://twitter.com/JoeXu/status/1396910262494457856?s=20
Cena was apologizing for saying during an interview with the Taiwanese broadcaster TVBS that “Taiwan is the first country that can watch” the latest Fast & Furious installment, F9, in which he stars.
Cena was widely panned on social media by users who accused him of caving for financial reasons.
“The willingness of American celebrities and large companies to bend the knee to modern day genocidal Nazis in China the year after China lied about covid and unleashed it on the world is truly being on the wrong side of history,” Outkick founder Clay Travis tweeted. “It’s pathetic.”
“The real question is whether this is just John Cena being an uninformed moron OR was he instructed to issue this ‘apology’ by F9 studio Universal Pictures (owned by Comcast),” journalist Saagar Enjeti tweeted.
“Taiwan is a country, you coward @JohnCena,” Newsmax host Steve Cortes tweeted.
https://twitter.com/CortesSteve/status/1397169096832307206?s=20The WWE superstar adds his name to a long list of celebrities and companies pressured into apologizing to China over issues of sovereignty.
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Luxury brands Versace, Givenchy, and Coach all apologized to China in 2019 for producing T-shirts that identified Hong Kong and Macao as countries and not part of China.
German carmaker Mercedes-Benz apologized to China in 2019 for quoting the Dalai Lama on its Instagram page, and the Marriott hotel chain apologized for wording a customer survey in a way that could potentially offend China.
