My local friends don’t think it was ever banned. (Of course they aren’t bored enough to monitor this every day.)
A lot of stupid claims about China in the Western press are easily debunked with the teeniest amount of Mandarin knowledge, or none at all. If it sounds too crazy, it’s probably false. Doesn’t help when people reaffirm each other’s totally unfounded opinions, and discredit anyone who speaks otherwise.
Just for info sake. Only memes with Xi and Winnie are banned. Literally the first thing I saw in China were Winnie the Pooh images in Hainan airport toilet.
The link you provided says the phrase "Winnie the Pooh" couldn't be posted on Weibo/WeChat at that time, with a screenshot not supporting that claim, but rather showing a sticker pack of Winnie the Pooh no long being available. Assuming that was truthful (I wouldn't be so sure because HK news about Mainland China can be as exaggerated as Western news, sometimes more because the stake's higher) that's still pretty far from the "someone who bans all Winnie The Pooh pictures across a country" claim above.
> but there are easily equally, if not more, absurd claims about USA in China too.
I wouldn't be surprised. Naturally this is what happens when you talk about things you have zero experience with.
> BTW, maybe try 8964 ???? and see what you get.
I never said nothing is censored. Btw at least every single soul I've talked to about this in China knows exactly what it means, contrary to claims I've seen from certain Western journalists that people typically aren't aware. Censoring something inevitably makes people more interested.
I think that it boils down to: if you're obviously making fun of an head of state (i.e. you have a meme/image with both Winnie and Xi Jinping) it's going to be recognized as such, and taken down... But Winnie by itself (or the memes in foreign contexts) aren't really at risk of getting banned.
The police entered the newsroom of the Manifesto, from which a bunch of leaflets had been thrown. On it you could read "Pastore Tedesco", referring to the German Pope (a wordplay on him being a pastor, and the German Sheperd dog breed)
Authorities can seem really thin-skinned, given that in both cases it's an almost innocuous comparison that is being teased (to a cartoon bear, or a dog breed)... But given that these were targeted to an head of state, it's not too surprising.
Winnie-the-Pooh is reportedly banned because of the superficial similarity to Mr Xi. (I have no sources for this because as usual the Chinese government doesn't publish an official policy explaining why they ban certain things on the Internet.)
It's a streisand effect thing. Pooh was banned for one stupid meme, which made him a symbol of the ludicrousness of Chinese censorship and oppression. So yeah, it's a real thing in China
You see a bunch of blatantly wrong things about countries as well that would be obvious for anyone who lived there. As a uncontroversial example, Winnie the Pooh clearly isn't banned in China, given how much merchandise is manufactured there. The "ghost cities" that were reported in about in China a few years are largely populated. They were empty at the time because they were new.
> I can not verify your claim since I don't play Kingdom Hearts
When you Google “Kingdom Hearts III China Cenorship”, Google returns more than 4 million results. Assuming there are repetitions and only 0.1% of them (i.e. 4K results) are genuine and unique. You think all these search results are fake?
I will also claim that atomic bombs exist. Do you need to make an atomic bomb yourself to verify my claim?
The first article I linked above [0] discussed several instances where Winnie the Pooh is banned, and many more it is not. So the censorship is real but not universal.
> I'm really skeptical that's true.... Winnie the Pooh is such a popular theme in products in China, I've never heard anything remotely close to such a ban....
IIRC, it's not a general ban, it's just censored from social media, probably by official directive.
I'm really skeptical that's true.... Winnie the Pooh is such a popular theme in products in China, I've never heard anything remotely close to such a ban....
Winnie the Pooh is a tongue-in-cheek monicker for Xi Jinping. While it's banned behind the Great Firewall, it _should_ be available outside China. But, outside China, the link now redirects to a generic regional Disney site.
Nowadays, anything that upsets the Chinese government seems to be out of bounds for large corporations. It's always about profit and reputation.
Again, much cultural context is lost in presenting this issue as merely censoring Winnie the Pooh. Remember, the Winnie the Pooh meme was invented by Chinese netizens to mock Xi. They continue to do so, but things stop being fun and games when the meme is used to mock themselves.
I believe Jinping made it illegal to compare him to Winnie the Pooh and at one point you could barely talk about Winnie on Weibo because it was censored.
What do you want me to say? It's banned in China. It wasn't always banned in China, but as of April 2019 all versions of Wikipedia are verboten. Here's an article from a little over a month ago describing someone's arrest for going there: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/amp/world/article-china-crac...
- Winnie the Pooh Baidu search: https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/49120719/62957954-...
- Baidu image search featuring both Winnie and Xi: https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/49120719/62958027-... (Memes are filtered or at least demoted, though.)
My local friends don’t think it was ever banned. (Of course they aren’t bored enough to monitor this every day.)
A lot of stupid claims about China in the Western press are easily debunked with the teeniest amount of Mandarin knowledge, or none at all. If it sounds too crazy, it’s probably false. Doesn’t help when people reaffirm each other’s totally unfounded opinions, and discredit anyone who speaks otherwise.
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