🧩 BND Motif Index · M1295
Hurting the feelings of the Chinese people
A foreign star or company says something the Chinese government takes as an insult, and the sponsors drop out, the broadcasts stop and the apology follows.
- 3claims filed under it
- 2right shows it came up on
- 2claims retold online
⚠️ A story people tell, not a claim that it's true.
A motif is the shape of a story as its tellers tell it, named the way a folklorist names a tale type, so the same story told about other people, by the other side or in another year lands in the same place. Some of the claims below are true, many are false. Arguing against a story is often a story of its own, its answer (Voter fraud is answered by Voter suppression, Lawfare by No one is above the law), and we file it there; where no answer has a motif yet, the arguments against a story sit with its tellings.
🎙️ Who it came up with
the shows we follow where its claims came up (0 left-leaning, 0 center, 2 right-leaning so far), colored by the show's lean; the bar is how many of its claims each one heard
- right-leaning
"Came up on" means one of its claims was heard on the show: told, reported or argued against. We don't yet mark which. Show leans are our own grouping of the shows we transcribe.
📰 In the news
the stories its claims were told about, the most told first (matched by our tools, so a link can be wrong)
- 📰 Soccer star Mbappé apologizes for Mao comment after Chinese backlash 2026-10-27 to 2026-10-29
🗣️ In so many words
the words that carry it
💬 the tellers' own words: “Chinese sponsors drop him and TV broadcasts are halted” “I now understand that it hurt many people in China and in Chinese communities around the world” “I started to talk about the human rights violations in China. And literally less than 24 hours, they stopped showing every Boston Celtics game on Chinese television.” “Kylian Mbappé had nothing to apologise for.” “statements that hurt their national sentiment” “The Chinese Communist Party is incredibly thin-skinned.”
🧶 Its claims
what's been told in this shape, in our words, by who told it: newest first in each; a claim's dots are the shows it came up on, in their lean's color (point at them for their names)
Told on the left 0
claims heard on left-leaning shows, and no right-leaning one
🦗 No claim heard only on the left so far.
Told on the right 1
claims heard on right-leaning shows, and no left-leaning one
- 2026-10-27 “China stopped showing Boston Celtics games because Enes Kanter Freedom spoke out about human rights violations.” 2
Retold online 2
claims many people posted in their own words
- 2026-10-29 “Kylian Mbappé apologized for referring to Mao Zedong as a dictator.”
- 2026-10-28 “Kylian Mbappé lost Chinese sponsors and triggered broadcast suspensions after referring to Mao Zedong as a dictator.”
M1295 · first seen 2026-10-29 · what this is · how the index works