Who Speaks for China?

Soccer star Kylian Mbappé, and the democratic West, are getting an unwelcome reminder of the resilience of Chairman Mao’s cult of personality. Fifty years after the despot’s death, Mr. Mbappé caused offense by referring, accurately, to the founder of the tyrannical regime at Beijing as a “Chinese dictator.” Following an outcry by Communist China, Mr. Mbappé made a public apology. His team, Real Madrid, and the Spanish soccer league, LaLiga, followed suit.The imbroglio reflects how the West’s attempts to do business with a totalitarian regime, far from liberalizing China, instead constrains expression in the free world. Faced with cancellations of lucrative sponsorship deals in China, Mr. Mbappé declared that his factual statement was “ill-judged.” The player, nicknamed “the dictator” for his influence in his sport, added regret that “it hurt many people in China and in Chinese communities around the world.”The Real Madrid team, too, had to bow and scrape, conveying “apologies to the Chinese people for any discomfort caused by the recent words of our player Kylian Mbappé.” This echoed the complaint made by China’s foreign affairs ministry, which decried Mr. Mbappé’s comments. “Words and actions that hurt the feelings of the Chinese people will naturally face unanimous opposition from all sectors of Chinese society,” the ministry griped.By what right, though, can the foreign ministry at Beijing speak for the Chinese people? The regime founded by Mao has never had the courage to hazard its authority over the Mainland by conducting a fair vote of the Chinese people it purports to represent. This is one reason why one of Mao’s successors, Xi Jinping, is so eager to snuff out the Chinese democracy that has blossomed on Taiwan, home to the Republic of China that Mao defeated in the civil war.The Republic of China’s multi-party democracy is a daily rebuke to Mr. Xi and the repressive regime that has taken root on the Mainland. The founder of the free Chinese republic, Sun Yat-sen, an occasional correspondent of The New York Sun, envisioned a “government by the people, of the people and for the people,” arguing that “I believe in this since I believe in the Chinese people.” Mao and his successors have never had such respect for the Chinese.Yet China’s Western apologists defend Mao. Feature the comments on X by a Cambridge University economist, Jostein Hauge. He touts China’s accomplishments under what he calls, in scare quotes, the “‘dictator’ Mao,” including a boost in literacy and steel production. Never mind the tens of millions killed by Mao’s policies. “Despite his failures, it does not take a rocket scientist to understand why Mao is revered in China,” Mr. Hauge insists.Revered by whom, though? And on what evidence? It’s hard to suggest with a straight face that the Chinese themselves, subjected to censorship and brainwashing from birth, can offer an objective appraisal of the founder of the totalitarian regime that imprisons them. As historian Frank Dikötter’s “Red Dawn Over China” shows, Mao’s dictatorship was imposed with no popular support on the Chinese people. Mao’s regime was never legitimate.It’s bad enough for Beijing to impose uniformity of thought and speech on its own subjects. It’s just as bad for the regime to try to keep the rest of the world in ideological lockstep. The humbling of Mr. Mbappé and his team is of a piece with episodes involving Western athletes and corporations forced to grovel after running afoul of Beijing. These incidents suggest the price to be paid when the West seeks to profit by doing business with Communist China.

Who Speaks for China?

Who Speaks for China?

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