John Cena Regrets Groveling Apology to China for Calling Taiwan a Country: ‘I Pissed off My Home Country’

Breitbart ^ | 12/07/2025 | Simon Kent

[DFG]

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.

[T.B. Yoits]

[T.B. Yoits]

John Cena donated $1M to the Communist organization Black Lives Matter^TM.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-8408447/John-Cena-donates-1m-Black-Lives-Mattter-saying-change-never-easy.html

[T.B. Yoits]

Re: "The dildo of consequences rarely arrives lubed."

Prior to June 6th, 2017, X user @auntyamerican (account since removed) wrote, "the dildo of consequences rarely arrives lubed." The context of the original post is unknown, nor has the original post been preserved.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-dildo-of-consequences-rarely-arrives-lubed

[WhiteHatBobby0701]

Pinyin is a CCP developed system, replaced Wade-Giles that was used by most countries (including Taiwan). Even they switched in 2000, and the huge city Xinbei has refused to use that name in the English speaking world (”New Taipei City”).