When the global soccer star Kylian Mbappé recently alluded to a meme depicting him as Mao Zedong and used the word “dictator,” the reaction from Chinese authorities was swift and revealing.
Major Chinese sponsors cut ties, and nationalist outrage flooded the Internet. China Media Group, the massive state-owned conglomerate that oversees China’s main national broadcast networks, suspended broadcasts of La Liga matches and games featuring Mbappé. Meanwhile, La Liga President Javier Tebas and Real Madrid, Mbappé’s club, scrambled to issue public apologies.
The episode is a textbook case of sharp power, a form of influence based on censorship and manipulation. Unlike soft power, which aims to win hearts and minds, or hard power, which relies on threats and force, sharp power exploits democratic openness to pierce defenses, silence critics, and compel compliance. In this case, Chinese decision-makers used commercial leverage to make powerful institutions in open societies bend to their will.
The deep asymmetry between free and unfree systems is what allows sharp power to thrive, and Beijing is especially adept at exploiting it. Authoritarian regimes run manipulated pseudo-markets at home, where outsiders must navigate distorted rules to gain commercial access. Yet these same regimes enjoy disproportionate latitude to operate and invest inside open democracies.
The Mbappé controversy highlights three crucial ways authoritarian states weaponize this asymmetry.
The first is economic coercion. Authoritarian regimes cultivate dependencies to build webs of leverage, then threaten to block access to their consumer markets to force professional sports teams, leagues, and athletes to censor themselves. The campaign against Mbappé follows a familiar playbook.
In 2019, after Houston Rockets executive Daryl Morey tweeted support for pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, sponsors fled and Chinese state television suspended NBA broadcasts for well over a year, prompting the league to distance itself from Morey. Later that year, when Arsenal midfielder Mesut Özil criticized Beijing’s systematic repression of Uyghur Muslims, Chinese state media dropped Arsenal matches, and the club declared itself apolitical as a way of protecting its commercial interests.
The second is manufactured nationalism, in which state policy and grassroots online outrage work hand in hand. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and state media quickly amplify online anger, creating a powerful, intimidating feedback loop.
The third is extraterritorial censorship. One troubling feature of today’s globalization is Beijing’s strong success in reshaping the rules of free expression beyond its borders. Mbappé is a French player on a Spanish soccer team, yet he apologized because ordinary Western satire collided with the rigid political taboos of a regime built on censorship.
Whether in sports, entertainment, or business, sharp power has the effect of turning global culture into an ideological battleground. By exploiting democratic openness while sealing off their own societies, authoritarian regimes such as China’s compel foreign citizens and corporations to enforce political compliance on their behalf. Hollywood has trimmed its sails to China’s winds for years, altering scripts and removing flags to avoid the ire of Chinese regulators. In 2021, actor and wrestler John Cena posted a video apology in Mandarin after Beijing stoked public outrage over his offhand reference to Taiwan as a country during a promotional interview for a Fast and Furious film.
To fight back, free societies need collective defenses that make coercion costly and compliance unnecessary.
First, institutions should reduce the leverage that makes intimidation work. Leagues, studios, and companies must diversify their commercial ties so that no single authoritarian market holds a veto over speech, and they should stress-test their exposure to Chinese revenue the way banks do so for financial shocks.
Second, they must stop facing Beijing alone. When one club or company is targeted, its peers, sponsors, and governing bodies should respond together, refuse to fill the commercial gap, and make clear that pressure on one is pressure on all. Beijing relies on picking off targets one at a time. Collective action denies it that advantage.
Governments have a role as well. They should treat economic coercion against their citizens and companies as a matter of clear national interest, to impose costs on those who wield it. They should also require transparency, so that audiences know when films, games, or broadcasts have been altered to satisfy a foreign censor.
Third, and finally, free societies must stand behind the individuals who bear the brunt of these campaigns. Athletes, artists, and executives who speak their minds should be able to count on legal, financial, and public support, rather than being left to issue apologies alone.
The stakes could not be higher. Every forced apology teaches Beijing that coercion is effective and teaches others that silence is the price of doing business. If free societies fail to push back, they will allow autocrats to set the rules of discourse at home and abroad, turning an already beleaguered global marketplace of ideas into an outpost of censorship.
Christopher Walker is vice president at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). Prior to joining CEPA, he was vice president for studies and analysis at the National Endowment for Democracy. Walker has served as an adjunct professor of international affairs at New York University. He holds a BA degree from Binghamton University and an MA from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Welt, El País, Il Foglio, Politico, Foreign Policy, and The Journal of Democracy.