Yesterday, Taiwan’s “cheeky” foreign affairs ministry took to Twitter to troll China over reports that the newly-released Winnie the Pooh movie had been “banned” from Chinese cinemas, only to then delete the tweet to avoid any “misunderstandings.”
“Taiwan’s#OhBearis dismayed at the ban slapped on his cousin Winnie’s latest film by censors in#China. Make no mistake: All bears are created equal in#Taiwan&@DisneyCRobinis screening nationwide,” read the tweet posted by the official Twitter account of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. OhBear is the mascot of Taiwan’s tourism board.
When asked about the tweet at a press conference yesterday, foreign ministry spokesperson Andrew Lee said with a smile that it had been posted to show the world that “Taiwan is a democratic nation with freedom of speech.”
However, that message became somewhat muddled when the foreign ministry deleted the tweet later on Wednesday night, saying that it wanted to “avoid any misinterpretation,” without actually explaining how people were apparently misinterpreting the tweet.
Winnie the Pooh tweet shows Taiwan's freedom of speech: MOFA (update)https://t.co/D8MLFdPrfl pic.twitter.com/77gN5XtT01
— Focus Taiwan (@Focus_Taiwan) August 8, 2018
Despite some sensationalist reports, Christopher Robinand Winnie the Pooh have not actually been “banned” from China. Instead, the movie has only been denied an official release in Chinese theaters. Each year, China enforces a quota on the number of foreign movies that can be shown in cinemas in China and the summer is a particularly difficult time to gain approval, typically being reserved for domestic blockbusters.
However, that’s not to say that the film’s main character did not play a part in the movie not managing to secure a China release. While Winnie the Pooh remains popular in China, his picture is sometimes censored on Chinese social media when netizens try to compare the pudgy cartoon bear with Chinese President Xi Jinping. A comparison that China’s “most powerful leader since Mao” apparently finds unflattering.
