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:
RT @benyunmowang I really should read Winnie the Pooh... #Xi #Abe #APEC2014 #China #Japan @EleanorFreund @mwings17 pic.twitter.com/W9nr0Hx1XA
— Nancy 韵 (@NancyYunTang) November 10, 2014
And his leisurely stroll with former US president Barack Obama:
FYI Winnie the Pooh is banned in China because of this image: pic.twitter.com/vAm9HBLK2e
— Jason Yuan (@JasonYuanDesign) July 16, 2017
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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Discuss: China banishes Winnie the Pooh from the internet (for a day)
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