After the ruling Communist Party announced plans to make changes to the Chinese Constitution earlier this week, removing term limits and paving the way for President Xi Jinping to stay in office indefinitely, Xi has received a lot of criticism on social media, The New York Times this week reported, and China’s censors have again banned images of Winnie the Pooh.
When criticisms of the president surfaced on social media, they often included pictures of Winnie the Pooh, for which Xi is likened due to his appearance. China has now banned the image of Winnie the Pooh.
Other posts were censored, and they include posts that mention the words, “my emperor,” “I object,” “proclaimed king,” “lifelong,” and other words. The criticism of Xi has been extensive on social media after people drew parallels of this decision to the rule of Mao Zedong.
Censorship of Winnie the Pooh first began in 2013 with a meme of a side-by-side comparison – there was a picture with Xi walking with former President Barack Obama next to an image of Winnie the Pooh and Tiger.
Well, at least we can look look forward to many more years of subversive Winnie the Pooh memes. Here’s a retrospective from 2013 to this week: pic.twitter.com/pqgW02gTqe
— Megha Rajagopalan (@meghara) February 26, 2018
The proposal to remove the term limits will be passed next month at the annual meeting of China’s Parliament, and other amendments will made to the constitution.
Chinese state media have been praising the decision to remove term limits, saying that that they should be removed for the benefit of the country as they work toward challenging America on a global stage.
