John Cena Apologizes - In Chinese - After Recognizing Taiwan In An Interview

John Cena found himself in hot water with China recently after calling Taiwan a country during an interview promoting Fast & Furious 9, which was released internationally on May 19. Apparently, Cena said on Taiwanese TV that it would be the first country to watch the film.

The statement was factual, but let's just say that recognition of Taiwan didn't go over well in China. The WWE superstar then issued an apology on social media Monday.

If you can't understand that, don't sweat it because I can't either. I took three years of Latin in high school for some unknown reason, and I don't think I could regurgitate a single word of it. So that's where I'm at with foreign languages.

Fortunately for all the people who don't know Chinese, the South China Morning Post was willing to translate Cena's apology.

“Hi China, I’m John Cena. I’m in the middle of Fast and Furious 9 promotions. I’m doing a lot of interviews. I made a mistake in one of my interviews. Everyone was asking me if I could use Chinese – staff gave me a lot of information, so there was a lot of interviews and information,” said Cena, who started learning Mandarin to help his wrestling promotion’s integration in China.

“I made one mistake. I have to say something very, very, very important now. I love and respect China and Chinese people. I’m very, very sorry about my mistake. I apologise, I apologise, I’m very sorry. You must understand that I really love, really respect China and the Chinese people. My apologies. See you.”

Man, talk about cowering. Read that second paragraph again.

People are acting like Cena had an agenda behind the comment. It looked accidental. Heck, I'm pretty sure I accidently referred to Ontario as a city in a piece a couple months ago. Man, am I sure glad the Canadian government didn't come gunning for me.

But whether it was accidental or intentional, Cena is right. Taiwan is in fact a country.

As for the comments to Cena's apology, the South China Morning Post had a few interesting ones of note. Check some of these out:

Like I said, this is clearly going over well.

Fast & Furious 9 will hit the big screens in the United States on June 25.