John Cena's Apology For Calling Taiwan A 'Country' Sparks Harsh Backlash

John Cena can easily clobber opponents in the wrestling ring and manhandle villains on the big screen, but many Twitter TWTR users are calling him out as a weakling (and worse) in his apology for referring to Taiwan as a “country.”

What Happened: Cena’s new film “Fast and Furious 9,” released by Comcast CMCSA subsidiary Universal Pictures, opened in Asia ahead of its May 28 U.S. premiere. In an interview with TVBS, a Taiwan-based broadcast network, Cena remarked that “Taiwan is the first country that can watch F9.”

Needless to say, this did not sit well with the Chinese government, which rejects the notion of an independent Taiwan and claims it as a sovereign territory, even though the island, officially known as the Republic of China, has been self-governing since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949.

Cena used his account on Weibo WB, a Chinese equivalent of Twitter, to backpedal his comments, albeit without elaborating on his alleged faux pas.

“I made a mistake,” he said in Mandarin in a video. “I must say now that, very, very, very importantly, I love and respect China and Chinese people.”

Global Times, a publication of the Chinese Communist Party, tartly expressed displeasure over Cena’s “falsely indicating that the island of Taiwan is a country,” adding that his apology was “welcomed by some Chinese netizens, who said he may have been guided by misinformation.”
The Global Times added that the “Fast and Furious 9” premiere on Taiwan was “postponed due to the recent COVID-19 surge.”

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What Happened Next: The musclebound Cena was promptly ridiculed by several prominent Twitter users as being a puny stooge to China’s Communist Party.

“John Cena is the latest China popular international celeb in furious reverse ferret mode for daring to suggest Taiwan might just be a country,” tweeted Jerome Taylor, a reporter who covers Taiwan for Agence France Presse.

Sarah McLaughlin, senior program officer for legal and public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, observed that the incident illustrates “how Hollywood’s wish to retain access to the Chinese market results in self-censorship.”

It seems both sides of the political aisle were unimpressed with Cena.

Isaac Chotiner, a New Yorker staff writer and former senior editor at the progressive magazine The New Republic, tweeted, “This is extremely pathetic,” while John Cardillo, a commentator on the right-wing Newsmax cable network tweeted, “@JohnCena is China’s bitch. Taiwan is a country.”

Other users were even more damning. Darwin So tweeted, “His name probably has changed to John China.”

But, arguably, the cruelest cut came from Twitter user mmmm…bRisket, who shared an October 2020 tweet where Barbra Streisand referred to Taiwan as a country and suggested the one-time "Funny Girl" had more cojones than the World Wrestling Entertainment WWE alum.

“Barbra Streisand, who recognizes Taiwan is a country, is more of a man than girly man and communist China sycophant John Cena who does Communist China's bidding,” said the tweet. “What's next, President Xi hires him to do PR and claim the virus wasn't from a Chinese government lab in Wuhan?”

(Photo by Gage Skidmore / Flickr Creative Commons).