PewDiePie banned in China for comparing Chinese President to Winnie The Pooh

China bans the swedish youtuber ‘PewDiePie’ for comparing the Chinese President Xi Jinping to Winnie the pooh. PewDiePie was banned due to the rising controversy about the Chinese censorship within the sports , entertainment and gaming world.

According to ‘Felix Kejllberg’ a.k.a ‘PewDiePie’ the root cause of ban was a video from 16th October where he shared and made some comments on the meme featuring a popular figure.

“I mean, the resemblance is uncanny,” he said of the meme, which compared the Chinese President to winnie the pooh.

Winnie the pooh is also banned in china, people shared images of the beat to potray the president of the nation in negative light.

In that video, he also shed some light on the recent events where ‘Blizzard Entertainment’ where they suspended a professional Hearthstone player ‘Ng Wai “blitzchung” after the gamer expressed support for Hong Kong while on live stream.

PewDiePie talked about how corporations frequently bow to Chinese censorship restrictions in an effort to enter the Chinese market.

A few days after the controversy, on 19th Oct PewDiePie posted a video in which he claimed that he was banned in China. PewDiePie showed a screenshot for a chinese search engine where he searched ‘PewDiePie’ and no results were displayed.

The ban on PewDiePie extends from YouTube related searches to reddit related forums.

He goes on to say that he knew there was a probability of this happening, especially noting that German EDM DJ Zedd was banned for liking a South Park tweet.

That ban came after China banned the show ‘South Park’, which recently aired an episode critical of countries policies. The title of the episode being ‘Band in China’

PewDiePie also noted that the name “PewDiePie” was awarded to China under Chinese copyright law in 2017. The document showed that the name would be used to sell a variety of garments, including wedding dresses

PewDiePie has a history of making jokes and sharing content that many might consider inflammatory or lame. Some organisations,  including  ‘The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) have classified certain actions as ‘hate speech’. The YouTuber recently rascinded a donation to ADL after his fans criticized  his contribution. Critics claim that the ADL in some cases, oversteps, a line between decrying hate speech and promoting outright censorship.

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