Regrets, he has a few. John Cena recalled to Joe Rogan on Friday how he upset Communist China in 2021 by referring to Taiwan as a country only to roil America with his groveling Mandarin-language apology.
The backdown came as the former WWE star and actor confessed on the Joe Rogan Experience it was a difficult learning experience with plenty of Americans then – and now – wondering just what he was aiming at by kowtowing to the Communist dictatorship in Beijing, as Breitbart News reported.
Cena had apologized to China for calling Taiwan a country while promoting his film F9.
Cena recounted the hard lesson to the podcaster, saying, “Just because you know the language doesn’t mean you know the culture,” further underscoring the move as American franchises increasingly cater to international audiences like China.
Fox News notes Cena said he spoke in an effort to spread pro-wrestling to foreign countries as he recalled doing prompter reads in Mandarin.
“You do a million of these things, and one of them said like, ‘Hey, Taiwan, see this,’ and it was all in Mandarin and the Pinyin [Chinese phonetic language using Latin alphabet] described Taiwan as a country. So ‘be the first country to see this.’ Now, over there, they look through a different lens, like geopolitics are murky waters, man.
“It was like a Ron Burgundy moment,” Cena said, referring to a famous gag from the comedy “Anchorman” in which Will Ferrell’s character mindlessly reads offensive rhetoric from the teleprompter. “Like ‘Go f— yourself, San Diego.’ It was like the most offensive thing you could say.
“Everybody was like, ‘What the f— did you just say?'” he recalled. “‘That’s not how we do it over here.’
“I had to apologize to China, and in apologizing to China, I pissed off my home country. I’m a patriot. I love the United States of America and everything it stands for, but, like, no one — it was never enough. Nobody was happy. Everybody was f—– up,” he said.
Now he won’t even speak Mandarin when asked, the Fox report notes.
File/American actor/wrestler John Cena attends the press conference of film ‘Bumblebee’ on December 14, 2018 in Beijing, China. (Visual China Group via Getty Images/Visual China Group via Getty)
“I just won’t do it,” he said. “It’s a skill that I have, but it’s a skill that’s going to remain with me because it’s — I don’t understand. I don’t have the depth of field to know what to call that place in that region of the world, and I haven’t done enough research, and I don’t have the wisdom.”
Beijing sees democratic, self-ruled Taiwan as part of its territory which is to be seized one day, by force if necessary.
The Communist dictatorship rages at any attempts to recognise the island as an independent nation even though the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has never ruled Taiwan.
The island is a self-governing democracy with its own democratically-elected leaders, military, and currency.