WWE Superstar/Hollywood actor John Cena recently issued an embarrassing apology (in Mandarin) to the CCP for referring to Taiwan as a country during an interview.
Cena was promoting his latest feature film, the ninth installment of the mega-popular Fast and Furious franchise when he made this supposed slip of the tongue.
Since Taiwan officially split with mainland China in 1949, the U.S. government has functionally engaged with Taiwan as an independent nation, although the U.S. typically avoids referring to Taiwan as such so as not to agitate the CCP. Taiwan has its own democratically elected leaders, currency, economy, passports, and over 23 million citizens. For all intents and purposes, and despite the CCP’s insistence that the territory belongs to them, Taiwan exists and acts as a nation in its own right.
The CCP views Taiwan as a rogue province that is yet to be brought back to the mainland, and its apparent preparations for military invasion in recent years have caused tensions to rise between China and the alliance of Australia and the U.S. Despite maintaining good relations with Taiwan, the U.S. has never explicitly stated that it would defend them if China invaded them, and recently there have been calls for President Joe Biden to make his stance on the matter clear as tensions with China escalate. Despite the tension, Australia and the U.S. continue to conduct a vast amount of trade with China.
For some reason, big action movies are very successful in China. This has led to Hollywood essentially putting China first when it comes to the production of their films. Anything that might upset the CCP is omitted to ensure that their blockbusters make as much profit as possible.
It’s possible that John Cena was told by Universal Pictures, the film’s distribution company, to make the apology so as not to damage the box-office intake.
While it’s easy to mock Cena for his kowtowing, this incident is representative of a serious problem: giant American media corporations in bed with a communist regime that is committing genocide against its own citizens, and which appears to have covered up the leak of a deadly virus from a virology lab, thus causing a global pandemic.
The CCP is committing heinous crimes against humanity within its own borders and abroad, but they essentially act with impunity because western nations are so economically bound up with China.
In apologizing for acknowledging Taiwan’s independence, and acting as though the CCP has a legitimate claim in its dispute with Taiwan, John Cena and the film-making company that put him to the task, sold out on their allegiance to their own country and the values it was founded upon, the citizens of China who are oppressed by their despotic government, and the over 100 million victims of communist regimes in the 20th century. The west is in need of a major attitude adjustment when it comes to China. We cannot afford to continually ignore China’s belligerent and deceitful actions, and we must do what we can to break our economic dependence on them.
China exerts far too much influence over America and Australia. Films are made so as not to provoke them because China generates so much profit. Social media giants censored and banned President Trump, but allow the CCP to promote its COVID propaganda. The World Health Organisation, charged with investigating the origins of the pandemic, appeared beholden to the CCP as it excused China of any misconduct (a narrative now being overturned even by leftist media). Strong, clear stances against the CCP’s brutal and underhanded tactics are needed at this moment.
John Cena, an iconic hero to many kids throughout the world, had the opportunity to show the world what it means to bravely stand up for what is right, and he failed. He and Hollywood chose profit before virtue, and the CCP is likely laughing about it.
Cena needs to hustle back to the locker room, ask himself whether his loyalty lies with the rights of citizens to live freely or with the tyrannical CCP, and respect the citizens of the nation of Taiwan. But let’s not finish with criticizing him, let’s take the looming threat of the CCP seriously and quit playing by their rules.
