China blocks HBO after John Oliver parody of Xi Jinping

HBO’s website has been blocked in China after censors on Chinese social media platform Weibo banned mentions of John Oliver following the British comedian’s parody of Chinese president Xi Jinping.

According to the anti-censorship and monitoring group Greatfire.org, HBO’s website was completely blocked within China as of Saturday, days after media reports emerged that Weibo had censored new posts mentioning Oliver or his HBO show Last Week Tonight.

After a wide-ranging 20-minute segment 17 June in which Oliver called Xi the “creepy uncle who imprisons 800,000 people in his basement”, the Twitter-like service blocked new posts related to Oliver as well as searches for the show’s Chinese name, Shangzhou jinye xiu.

Attempts to access HBO’s website from within China were unsuccessful on Monday. The website for HBO Asia, a Singapore-based broadcast network that airs HBO content in China through Dingjijuchang, a Tencent TV subscription service, also appeared to be blocked. The subscription does not include all HBO shows.

HBO did not respond to requests for comment on the censorship of Oliver on Weibo. Tencent was not immediately available.

His segment on Xi could not be found on Chinese streaming sites where other episodes of Last Week Tonight have been uploaded by individual users. Youtube, which hosts clips of the show, has long been blocked in China.

Any blocking of HBO’s website in China is not likely to have a huge impact. Access to HBO’s often salacious content has always been spotty in China, with Chinese broadcasters heavily censoring shows like Game of Thrones. Most Chinese users watch HBO through virtual private networks, or VPNs.

In the show, Oliver made fun of the Chinese president’s apparent sensitivity over comparisons of his figure with that of Winnie the Pooh. Images of the AA Milne character, used to mock Xi, have been censored in China.

“If your face even remotely resembles that of a beloved cartoon character, the smart move here is to lean in,” Oliver said, showing an image of his own face next to that of The Lion King’s Zazu, a red-billed hornbill.

Oliver also took a serious tone in the show, criticising Xi for the removal of term limits from the Chinese constitution, the use of political re-education camps in the Muslim province of Xinjiang, and a crackdown on civil society. Oliver noted the continued house arrest of Liu Xia, wife of Chinese dissident and nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo who died last year while serving an 11-year prison sentence.

“While China has never been known as a haven for free expression, [Xi] has clamped down noticeably on any form of dissent whatsoever,” Oliver said.