China Dictatorship (中国独裁统治)

14.1.3.4. Xi Jinping looks like Winnie-the-Pooh (习近平长得像小熊维尼, 2017)

Got censored due to comparisons between Xi Jinping and Winnie in 2017: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnie-the-Pooh#Censorship_in_China

Thailand has their own version: Side-by-side comparison between Thai King Vajiralongkorn and Hamtaro. This is the Thai version of Xi Jinping looks like Winnie-the-Pooh (习近平长得像小熊维尼, 2017). It has been used by protesters as part of the 2020 Thai protests. Left photo source..

In Xi Dada (习大大, 2015) we see that a People’s Daily (人民日报, CCP media) video actually interviews someone who mentions that, so the meme has had a positive connotation at least some point in the past.

2021-06-07: Triple A game Cyberpunk 2077 developer used a "Winnie the Pooh" label internally to mark game content that needed to be censored for the Chinese release as shown by a source code leak
- More precisely, the constant was named Censor_WinnieThePooh, with a comment // China.
- https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/comments/nua4do/cdpr_seems_to_have_used_the_name_winnie_the_pooh/
- https://gamerant.com/cyberpunk-2077-winnie-the-pooh-china-source-code-leak/
- https://www.vg247.com/2021/06/08/cyberpunk-2077-winnie-the-pooh-china-censor/

Some good photoshops:

Figure 168. Comparison image between Xi Jinping waking with then USA president Barack Obama with a Winnie-the-Pooh cartoon still of Winnie walking with Tigger, the tiger. The original photo is from Xi’s 2013 visit to the Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands, California. Source.

Figure 169. Comparison image between Xi Jinping shaking hands with the Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe and a Winnie-the-Pooh cartoon still of Winnie shaking hands with the Eeyore, the donkey. The original photo is from Abe’s lacklustre 2014 visit to Beijing. Source.

Figure 170. Comparison image between Xi Jinping on a car in a 2015 military parade and a toy Winnie-the-Pooh on a car. Source.

Figure 171. Real photo of Xi Jinping edited to look like Winnie the Pooh. Source.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHmLUYCUYT0 "Xi Jinping as Winnie the Pooh Dancing to Bat Out of Hell by Meatloaf" by TheFakening (2020). Deep fake of several girls wearing Winnie the Pooh clothes with a Xi Jinping face. The song choice "Bat Out of Hell" is a reference to COVID because one of the theories is that the disease started in bats.

https://youtu.be/QjQbQlN9Ev8?t=398 The original Winnie the pooh story from 1926 became public domain in 2022: https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2022/01/05/what-winnie-the-pooh-lapsing-into-the-public-domain-really-means/. The Red shirt depiction is from 1932 however, and some key characters like Tigger are also from later years. Stephen Colbert made a Hemingway mashup, as one of Hemingway’s work also became public domain at that same point.