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China banishes Winnie the Pooh from the internet (for a day)

Pooh went missing from China's Weibo platform for around a day after people made memes comparing him to President Xi Jinping.

Zoey Chong Reporter
Zoey is CNET's Asia News Reporter based in Singapore. She prefers variety to monotony and owns an Android mobile device, a Windows PC and Apple's MacBook Pro all at the same time. Outside of the office, she can be found binging on Korean variety shows, if not chilling out with a book at a café recommended by a friend.
Zoey Chong

China's Great Firewall has struck again. But this time, its victim was not a tech giant like Facebook, Google or Twitter, and its censorship didn't last more than a day.

Winnie the Pooh was cast outside the mainland after Chinese netizens used memes to draw comparisons between Chinese President Xi Jinping and the honey-loving bear, the BBC reported

The amusing memes that authorities took issue with, and which have gone viral, include an awkward handshake between Xi and Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe:  

And his leisurely stroll with former US president  Barack Obama :    

The ban applied mostly to posts on Weibo, a popular Twitter-esque platform in the country. Images of Pooh were deleted and comments with the character's name in Chinese received an error message.

Someone apparently thought better of eradicating Pooh from the internet, with pictures of him eventually returning to Weibo. Chinese users of the web noted it seemed the ban has been removed.

The move could appear bizarre to non-Chinese citizens, but the country is no stranger to shutting down talk that it deems disrespectful of the government. The censorship this time was strategically timed ahead of a conference held by China's ruling party, said CBS.

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