See https://gitter.im/debezium/user?at=5d77a487d5c7bd57946a253f

org.apache.kafka.connect.errors.ConnectException: no viable alternative at input 'CREATE DATABASE example CHARACTER SET = DEFAULT;' with DBZ 0.9.5 Final. The same query fails to parse when I extend some test case on master. However, MySQL 5.5 and 5.7 (both Percona) and MariaDB 10.3 agree that this is valid. As far as I can tell DBZ struggles with the charset being set to DEFAULT, not because of the odd =. It works with or without = if I specify an actual charset like latin1.
it's Syntax Error in Percona 8.0+, though

It is necessary to check if the same proble is for CREATE TABLE and column definitions.