South Park China Ban

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Overview

South Park China Ban refers to the American animated TV series South Park being purged from the Chinese segment of the Internet following an episode parodying the influence of the Chinese censorship upon the American media.

Background

On October 2nd, 2019, episode "Band in China" of the American animated TV series South Park premiered.^[1] The two major plotlines of the episode parodied how the American media companies are imposing self-censorship in order to avoid their product being prohibited by the Chinese censorship authorities (clips form the episode shown below).

I can't sell my soul like this. I want to get away from that farm more than anything, but it's not worth living in a world where China controls my country's art.

The episode also brought attention to the 2017 Winnie the Pooh ban in China which was enforced due to memes comparing the President of the People's Republic of China Xi Jinping to the character. In one scene of the episode, several NBA players appear boarding a plane to China, including James Harden who on October 7th, 2019, apologized to China for a previous tweet made by Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey.^[2]

Notable Developments

On October 5th, 2019, Redditor gcddsb reported that the Chinese censorship authorities seemed to be working to remove all content related to South Park from the Chinese segment of the internet.^[3] On October 7th, 2019, Hollywood Reporter wrote that following the episode, Chinese censorship authorities have scrubbed all clips, episodes and discussions of South Park from the Chinese segment of the internet.^[4] The article stated that mentions of the show could no longer be discovered on the Chinese social network Weibo, and that no clips or episodes of the show could be discovered on Alibaba Group-controlled video hosting service Youku.

On October 7th, 2019, the official South Park twitter account posted a mocking apology written by the show creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone (shown below).^[5] The tweet received over 35,200 retweets and 90,900 likes in two days. A repost of the statement to /r/southpark subreddit gained over 10,600 upvotes in the same period.^[6]

Online Reactions

In the following days, multiple memes about the ban were posted in South Park fan communities such as /r/southpark subreddit (examples shown below).^[7]^[8] Additionally, the episode and the subsequent ban of the show in China was mentioned in multiple discussions related to the Blizzard Boycott.