John Cena

Personally, I’m inclined to give John Cena a pass on this one. In case you’re not familiar with the incident being discussed, while promoting Fast and Furious 9 (known in the US as F9), Cena referred to Taiwan as a country. As may not surprise you if you know anything about China-Taiwan relations, China absolutely flipped its lid over this. Cena ended up making a formal apology, and that really ticked this poster off.

But like I said, I’m inclined to give him a pass. For one thing, he was promoting a movie, and the studio may have insisted that he make the apology. For another thing, the exact status of Taiwan is complicated, to say the very least. It is a country, but a lot of other countries, the U.S. included, don’t formally recognize it as such. I’m not saying that it’s good to back down when China starts throwing its weight around, but I am saying that it’s a complicated situation.