In addition to the artwork being pulled from public sale, KAWS has been accused of insulting China and its folks. The piece has since been pulled from Sotheby’s public sale site and was initially scheduled for public sale on October 7, one week after the 70th anniversary of People’s Republic of China, which was lead by Zedong and first officially celebrated in Beijing on October 1, 1949. The piece was anticipated to succeed in between $620,000 and $950,000 HKD (approximately $79,000 - $121,000 USD). In keeping with reports, the controversy surrounding KAWS started after his painting of Chinese communist revolutionary Mao Zedong was listed for public sale at Sotheby’s Hong Kong. Consequently, his work consistently commands enormous public sale prices. He was also commissioned by inventive director Kim Jones to work on the spring summer time 2019 assortment with Dior, launching a collection of fashionable threads, purchase kaws companion figure grey moma, accessories and even a Dior x Kaws Companion plush toy that sees prices going up as much as US$30,000 on the resale market.

Recently he additionally worked on a Uniqlo x Sesame Street collaboration that launched a group of plush toys. UNIQLO China and resell platform Poizon have also taken a stance by eradicating all KAWS merchandise from their shops. Negative feedback aimed at KAWS have been flooding social media platform websites reminiscent of Instagram and Weibo, kwas carpet as well as videos of people burning KAWS merchandise in protest. The exhibition, which will travel to the Yuz Museum in China in March, is drawing a wholesome crowd of millennials, akin to San Antonio natives Enrique Sanchez, a photographer, and Alec Estrada, an art knowledgeable, who've been following KAWS for five years and have traveled across the United States to expertise the exhibition on a better level. "The works chosen for this exhibition signify his total inventive profession in that they present some of the finest examples of his paintings, drawings, sculpture and early graffiti interventions. Sanchez stated the exhibition is an effective timeline of who KAWS is and thinks the price of admission was method too low-cost to expertise all of it.