Gresini's Moto2 Sponsor QJMOTOR Calls For Motegi Winner Manu Gonzalez To Be Sacked

By David Emmett |

Chinese motorcycle manufacturer QJMOTOR, title sponsor for the Gresini Moto2 team, has demanded that Manu Gonzalez, winner of Sunday's shortened Moto2 race at Motegi, be immediately sacked by the team. In a statement on the Chinese section of its website, the motorcycle manufacturer objected to Gonzalez wearing a hachimaki, a traditional Japanese headband, on the grid before the start of the Moto2 race. QJMOTOR referred to the choice to wear the headband as having "hurt the national feelings of Chinese rider and the Chinese people".

The headband itself featured the red circle on the current Japanese flag on a white background, and a text in Kanji characters saying "No. 1" according to Japanese veteran journalist and MotoMatters contributor Akira Nishimura. Akira-san has more explanation of the history and significance of the hachimaki headband on his Twitter/X profile.

It was not the contents of the headband, but the headband itself that QJMOTOR raised objections to. The headband also has strong associations with the Japanese past, and especially the period between the two world wars when the Empire of Japan invaded Manchuria and then fought the Second Sino-Japanese war, which saw atrocities committed on a vast scale by the Japanese Imperial Army, which spread beyond China during World War II. That period of history echoes very strongly in contemporary China and other parts of Asia.

QJMOTOR notes that Manu Gonzalez himself is not to blame. The Spaniard was unaware of Chinese history, the company acknowledged. Nevertheless, they were maintaining their call for the contract with Gonzalez to be broken immediately. QJMOTOR has removed the photo of Gonzalez from its racing website page. The Gresini team has not yet issued an official statement on the affair.

There are two root causes of this situation. The first is that, as a motorcycling superpower, Japan is viewed very positively in the MotoGP paddock, and throughout motorcycle racing. Riders and teams have have extensive contacts with Japanese motorcycle manufacturers, Japanese component manufacturers, and Japanese safety equipment companies. There are several Japanese engineers and mechanics floating around various teams outside of Honda and Yamaha.

That positive view of Japan is something riders like to reflect when they race at Motegi. There were a spate of special helmets at the Japanese GP, and riders were paying tribute to the country in many different ways.

As most of the paddock, and especially the riders, were brought up in Europe, they receive a very limited education on the history of Asia, and indeed, the history of the world outside of Europe (or even their own nations). As a result, European riders and teams are often quite unaware of just how sensitive other Asian countries are about Japan, and their traumatic history during the Imperial period.

Consequently, riders are completely unaware that their use of Japanese symbolism and imagery does not always sit well with other countries in Asia. The most egregious example was Johann Zarco's use of the Japanese Imperial flag on his helmet, something which caused a huge amount of offense in Korea and other countries.

But QJMOTOR's objections also seem to be exceptionally sensitive. They reflect the internal politics of China, where the government is increasingly turning to extreme nationalist perspectives of history to maintain their grip on power as China's demographics begin to work against them. Companies that wish to prosper inside of China must toe the government line, and that includes a particular sensitivity to the past.

This issue is a symptom of the changing landscape of international motorcycling. Chinese motorcycle manufacturers are rapidly starting to penetrate the more traditional motorcycle markets of Europe and the US. As part of that push, they are taking a more active role in racing. QJMOTOR joins CFMOTO in sponsoring teams in the MotoGP paddock, while Kove is expanding into rallying, and QJMOTOR is active in the WorldSBK paddock as well.

For European teams, this means they will have to increase their awareness of Chinese cultural issues and sensitivities. QJMOTOR may be overreacting to an innocent and unwitting action by Manu Gonzalez, but the Gresini team have to realize that this is the price you pay as a team when you take QJMOTOR's money as a title sponsor. When Chinese motorcycle manufacturers are paying the piper, it is they who get to call the tune. It is up to the team, and especially their PR and marketing staff, to understand the sensitivities and boundaries of their sponsors.

Of course, all of this is quite unfair on Manu Gonzalez. The former WorldSSP300 champion has proved himself to be extremely talented, and has a strong future ahead of him. As sport has become ever more professionalized and specialized, athletes are increasingly living inside a bubble, entirely insulated from the outside world. They train, they eat, they sleep, they compete, and that's it.

It is hard to blame Gonzalez for the consequences of his decision to wear a hachimaki on the grid at Motegi. He couldn't be expected to know. But if teams want to attract Chinese motorcycle manufacturers as sponsors, they need to be aware of these sensitivities. And not just of Chinese manufacturers, but for all of their sponsors.  

Moto2
Motegi, Japan
Kalex
Manu Gonzalez
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Comments

I think this is a balanced and well written article (as always, here) with a reasonable conclusion, though I think the conclusion isn't as strong as it could be. I love MotoGP and I know that riders don't exactly spend time getting to know history and cultural sensitivities - this would detract from their lifelong career goals. So let's give them a soft pass. But for everyone else involved in the commercial aspect, and even for us fans, it's not wrong to say we should be more open-minded to learning and being sensitive to these things. Sports can be a gateway and platform for positivity and broader cultural awareness - I grew up watching F1 and MotoGP races and learning very well the national anthems of other countries, but also in the news and stories around the areas where races were and drivers and riders were from. There are lots of stories and histories I'm not well versed in, but I'm pretty sure if someone showed up at Sachsenring wearing an SS uniform that said "#1" we would all universally understand. 

I should note - Germany had a very strong post-war reaction in which they nationally acknowledged and condemned the actions that the country had been responsible for. This is very much not what Asian countries experienced with Japan. On the other hand, as noted in the article, this isn't exactly new, as far as the way teams view Japan in MotoGP and what they understand or don't. Note that I am not saying we should denigrate Japan, just that maybe there's a lot more to the reaction than internal Chinese politics, and extreme nationalism. I watched my Asian parents and their generation have what I thought were unreasonably negative sentiment towards the Japanese, but then I didn't grow up under their circumstances. 

More sensitivity and dialog and acceptance should be practiced all around, in all directions. Atonement for past actions goes a long way for people who feel aggrieved. We do lots more innocent or ignorant things insulting cultures pretty much all year long in sports. I think if we actually address some of these little by little it's not a bad thing. I stopped listening to a lot of motocross/supercross media and it irks me that I have avoided exposing my daughter to many things motorcycling because she finds things offensive that I hadn't - around gender, language, masculinity. I love motocycling and motorsport but it really is different when you see your own family turned off by what you might yourself consider innocuous. 

An apology and a firm no. Being insensitive to Chinese politics and history was shortsighted. Therefore, apologise, I'm sure it was not intended. However, the rider should stay, especially if, as QJ say, he had no idea. 

My personal "favourite" was Marc's 2013 helmet and T-shirt design, showing how a person of European decent can alter their eye shape to be more Asian.

Breathtaking.

Turns out in Japan, they're not that tuned into what white people do whilst making horrendous racial stereotypes of Asians.

This seems unusually harsh - and not the best outcome for all the parties involved. Better to educate the rider rather than just placate the sponsor. This is an opportunity for growth all round, and yet that possibility falls by the wayside as the offended 'player' chooses to take the short-sighted punitive action available to them. What a shame.

"But at Quite Junk Motors, we do very much respect the Japanese motorcycle design and engineering. Which we steal. We also quite hope we aren't about to be banned in USA and Europe for our hackable software as per the news a few days go."

I appreciate cultural sensitivity. More so than nationalistic political and economic shite in conjuction with Putin/N Korea/Iran. Their reactive rigidity etc fits with the current ideological movement which is a slow motion tragedy from my seat. Things need to cool and recede.

It's a tricky one. It does fit with the current political climate but the sentiments are not the creation of those politics alone. Is it a huge international deal and we should expect a statement from the CCP ? I don't think so but it's not something that requires any heat to boil. There are always crack pots who will deny anything and everything. The twin towers were not this or that, the holocaust never happened etc. There are also crack pots who think the Nanjing massacre is US propaganda and terrible experiments carried out on live human subjects were actually Japanese heros trying to save the Chinese from a Soviet biological attack. As is often the case, they walk amongst us. The problem is, they have also walked in the highest offices of Japan. I'm sure that the majority of Japanese do not subscribe to the same views but when even the president does or finds it politically expedient to do so, any association gets a huge middle finger from those who were once at the end of the bayonet. Some of the victims are still living, their children, grandchildren etc. Metaphorically or not, they all know or have known empty seats at a table. The feelings might be used by politicians at one time or another but they are not the product. QJ's problem is an image, their name and logo, their money and an association, loose or not, with a history. They had to respond, they have to ask for something huge. They wont get it but the asking helps. 
 

Chinese sensibilities are well founded, as their experience with imperial japan is one exclusively of horrendous atrocities. What is not clear is why the QJM turned against the rider and not the team, which arguably is responsible for MG18. I find it stupid muscle flexing against the weakest link and one with the minimum of consequences: they can be seen as heeding the nationalistic party lines without endangering their racing effort / investment. A behavior I personally do not condone or accept. If Chinese want a place on world stage, they should as well learn the rules. On the other hand, someone in the Team must be really responsible and she/he must be identified and suffer the consequences. But maybe he or she are of such an importance that they are untouchable. 

 

Within two generations of Japan bombing Pearl Harbor you could wear a rising sun headband in public in the US, and not a soul would say anything as they drove by in their Japanese-made cars. Cultural sensitivities? Cultures that can't take offense to anything and everything are stuck in the past. If you kowtow to everybody that takes offense, you become a meek doormat. Forgive and forget and focus on things that matter in life, like building tracks that generate exciting races. 

The point is, it isn't put on, its real.  They HATE each other to this day but both are scrupulous enough to make deals with each other in business.  I see it all the time because I'm aware of it.  Having read all the books about it I empathise too.  Just read about 'the rape of nanking' and you'll know it lingers.  Even in the Olympics, they can't congratulate each other.  

There's a code of conduct in Gymnastics that as you come off a piece of apparatus, you shake/high 5 the one going onto it next.  I actually saw both countries touch hands at these Olympics so there you go, 88 years and a handshake, we're getting somewhere!

Set aside the history for a moment... that's not what this is about. 

This is all about the unusual relationship between public (and even private) companies and the Chinese Communist Party, and the social credit system they all live under. QJMotor is just doing its dutiful canceling of anyone deemed to have run afoul of the CCP's hyper-nationalistic cultural sensitivities. The company itself probably doesn't care, and I doubt any Chinese people actually care either, but the party apparatchiks who sit on its board won't miss the opportunity to curry favor with the big bosses and to cover their own asses for sponsoring a western racing team who's rider committed a perceived cultural offense like Manu did. The Chinese social credit system demands they take this action as a response to their own mistake. It's just a numbers game!

Nah. They do care. It's nothing to do with social credit. It pre-dates that by, as Taff points out, 80 odd years. They really do care, they don't care just because the CCP cares. In paticular they care because Japan has a history of playing it all down, denying it ever happened in some cases. For what they became after the war, that history must be hard to accept. It really riles the Chinese. 

The swastika is an ancient symbol which has been around a lot longer than the Nazis but put it in a white circle on a red background and there you have it, the associations are transformed. The problem with, 'well everybody has a history', is that it fails to negate anything.

The more I think of it, the more I think they know full well it wont happen. Possibly they even called for it specifically because it can't happen.

A province chief tells his PA, he wants to go for a quiet meal at a small resturant in the village he spent his childhood. Could they reserve a table ? The PA calls the county chief, who calls the etc etc. By the time the he arrives for his quiet dinner the entire resturant is reserved for him alone, red carpet, dancers, jugglers, performing horses, a tonne of fireworks and he has to look pleased even if it ruined his night. It goes backwards too. QJ have to ask for blood, it wont happen but it may be appreciated that they asked. 

Maybe they care, maybe they don't. I think you and I are describing the same effect though... it's borne of centuries-old Confucianism and more recently codified into the Social Credit System and its corporate variant. 

Part of that says that a corporation is held responsible for the behavior of its business partners. This is to discourage business between a "trustworthy" company and a less trustworthy company. So QJMOTOR could rightly be accused of doing business with a foreign entity who is openly hostile to the CCP's nationalistic objectives, and thus blacklisted. Their strict demand for punishment of the offending party can be seen as an attempt to avoid this fate.

I agree with you that the outcome is less relevant than the gesture. But regardless of who cares and how much, it's without a doubt the corporate social credit system that was behind this response.

No. They do care. No maybe about it. I've heard it from mouths, that were speaking words, to my ears, more times than I care to remember. If they came from badge wearing members or 'ultra nationalists' that's one thing but they weren't. 

It's not that politics are not involved but it's not simply the result of politics. To write it off as such is just another political statement from the other side of a coin. 

Geely, a top 500 global company with over 131,000 employees, has 36% ownership of Qianjiang Motorcycle (QJMotor). I imagine an image of Gonzalez on the grid wearing the hatchimaki head scarf blew up the company WeChat and the digital mob is calling for his head.

According to information on the web, the hatchimaki has been around for over a thousand years and its origin is unknown. Yet human atrocities come in many ways and the people of China need not look that deeply into the past nor look outside their own border to imagine horrors. All that is required is to revisit the enforcement of the one-child policy in rural China. The empty seat at the table is a high chair. The documentary One Child Nation is a difficult watch. 

While the rape of Nanking was absolutely horrible, China doesn't exactly have cleanest hands in history (Tibet, Tiananmen Square, One child rule, etc).  This stinks of towing the CCP line and social credit system.  My guess is that Gresini will politely say "no", QJ will say okay, and this will all quietly go away.

The world has gone mad, mad I tell ya...

 

I call for the immediate sacking of Dani Pedrosa as KTM test rider. Furthermore I demand him stripped of all his titles and removal from MotoGP's hall of fame.

It's an absolute disgrace we still have to watch hime ride around with a helmet representing the Japanese word for Samurai on the top and a little samurai drawing at the back.

As undoubtedly everyone here knows, the Samurai lived by the Bushido, their moral code.

Each Japanese soldier was indoctrinated to accept that it was the greatest honor to die for the Emperor and it was cowardly to surrender to the enemy. ... Bushido therefore explains why the Japanese soldiers so mistreated POWs in their custody. Those who had surrendered to the Japanese—regardless of how courageously or honorably they had fought—merited nothing but contempt; they had forfeited all honor and literally deserved nothing. Consequently, when the Japanese murdered POWs by shooting, beheading, and drowning, these acts were excused since they involved the killing of men who had forfeited all rights to be treated with dignity or respect.

It's a blatant slap in the face of all those who have fallen victim to Japanese horrors in the past centuries and a disgrace to our beautiful sport.

 

Yup, completely bonkers...

Okay I guess I’ll add a few thoughts to the discussion:

  1. Singling out the rider for punishment is just pathetic. The sponsor went for the lowest hanging fruit. Shame on them. If the rider were fired (which I have no doubt will not be the case) then shame on Gresini. But again, that won’t happen.
  2. Ignore the current Chinese hyper-nationalism and their own awful history of vile oppression against various minority groups and Mao’s tyrannical Cultural Revolution, and still the Japanese atrocities against the Chinese, Koreans and others is utterly disgusting. So it’s not unwarranted for the Chinese to be extremely sensitive to these matters.
  3. Additionally, the Japanese have been absolutely terrible at owning up to their war crimes. My sister in law is Japanese (born and raised), and she fully recognizes how little Japan has done to atone for its sins. Comparing Japan to say, Germany is a non-starter. Germany has bent over backwards to atone for its many crimes of World War II and surrounding years. And I’m saying this as a Jewish man.
  4. So basically we all need to understand that there is a lot we don’t understand. These issues are incredibly complex. Expecting people to just move on and forgive and forget is easy to say if you’re not part of a group that’s suffered mightily at the hands of another group and never received any proper apology or compensation.

  5. Now let’s get back to racing…

     :-)