Full disclosure here: I do not follow the WWE, nor have I ever seen any of the Fast & Furious movies. I do know that John Cena is a star of both the WWE and the F&F franchise. However, for a guy who embraces the tough guy image, John Cena sucks up to Communist China.

Move over, LeBron James, make room for another American toady.

Earlier this month, Cena appeared on the Taiwanese broadcasting network TVBS to promote Fast & Furious 9 and announced in Mandarin that “Taiwan is the first country that can watch F9.” This makes sense, because Jeremy Lin, who was born in Taiwan, directed the movie. However, it turns out that the movie did not open in Taiwan last Wednesday as expected, due to a Covid outbreak. Instead, the film opened first in mainland China last Friday.

But getting first dibs on the latest John Cena movie didn’t matter to Communist China. Rather, Chinese media had a meltdown because Cena called Taiwan a “country.” Beijing sees the little nation as renegade, and any support for its independence as an attack on Chinese sovereignty. So Cena referring to Taiwan as a “country” brought out the guns in Chinese media.

First, CCP-run Global Times reported that the Chinese public were “underwhelmed” by the movie. Social media platform Weibo also pressured him to apologize.

And apologize he did. John Cena, tough guy American wrestler and star of action films, groveled in an apology given in Mandarin.

“I must say, this is very, very, very, very, very, very important, I love and respect China and Chinese people. I am very very sorry for my mistake. You must understand, I really love and respect China and Chinese people.”

“I did a lot of interviews. In one interview, I made a mistake. . . .”

John Cena apologized in Chinese on Sina Weibo after calling Taiwan a country during an interview promoting Fast & Furious 9 pic.twitter.com/dzRKIYgEzL

— Joe Xu (@JoeXu) May 24, 2021

Yes, John Cena does love China, especially after traveling to Shanghai in 2012 with the WWE. He also began learning Mandarin in 2016, and lived in Yinchuan for a few months in 2018 while working on a film with Jackie Chan.

He even cut a commercial in 2018 for a Chinese chili sauce which he says he puts on his broccoli. Of course he speaks in Mandarin.

John Cena’s Useful Idiot Apology Tour ruffled lots of American feathers, of course. One Twitter user posted this image of “John Xina.”

Screenshot/Dr. Ricardo Harambe/Twitter.

Becket Adams of the DC Examiner observed:

“man, China really does have Hollywood by the balls. it’s at the point now where the CCP has U.S. actors issuing POW-style confessions.”

Sen. Tom Cotton simply tweeted:

“Pathetic.”

Meanwhile, in a long thread at Twitter, Breitbart’s John Hayward slammed not only John Cena but Hollywood for sucking up to China. China — which he says is “weaponizing its entire economy to serve the geopolitical interests of the Communist Party.”

“We sent over a tough-guy wrestler action star, and in two seconds flat we get back a sniveling toady regurgitating Communist propaganda.”

“Read Chinese media and you’ll see the CCP is smugly confident that its political control of private industry – that would be fascism, for those of you unclear on what that term really means – is the key to dominating information space for the rest of history.”

Hayward continued by asking Americans to not patronize anything by John Cena or the Fast & Furious franchise. He then concluded his thread with this:

“Can you imagine a toady like Cena or LeBron offering a groveling apology to Americans for offending their values? Of course not. They’re not AFRAID OF YOU. Make them afraid, or settle for being the audience they care about less, the audience they’ll never respect.”

In the meantime, China, with Xi Jinping at the helm, continues its Long March to dominate the world, and John Cena has just become another one of Xi’s useful idiots.

Welcome, Instapundit readers!

Featured image: Krystal Bogner/flickr/cropped/CC BY 2.0.