Comparisons between Winnie the Pooh and Xi Jinping, a possible reason for the cancellation of the film in Hong Kong

Hong Kong today she canceled the screening of the horror film based on Winnie the Pooh “for technical reasons”prompting speculation whether this was due to comparisons that have been made for years between the bear and Chinese President Xi Jinping, which the authorities do not like.

As reported by Efe, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, a British horror film in which the main character terrorizes a group of young students, was scheduled to be shown in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory on Thursday. Moviematic, the local film group that organized the pre-premiere screening, announced that the event had to be canceled due to “technical reasons”, local media reported today.

In a statement released on Tuesday, the film’s Hong Kong distributor, VII Pillars Entertainment, announced the cancellation of screenings in Hong Kong and Macau without giving a reason.

“We are sorry for the disappointment and inconvenience,” they complained.

The film became a new reflection of the “moving red lines” of Hong Kong, a city that introduced the Film Censorship Act 2021 to ban films deemed a threat to national security. The law also empowered the chief city clerk to revoke the license of any film if it was deemed “inconsistent with the interests of national security.”

Winnie the Pooh, created in 1926 by British children’s author AA Milne, has been censored in mainland China since 2013.when netizens began using an image of a fictional bear to mock Xi.

It all started in 2013, when Xi was on his first visit to the United States as head of state and there, walking with his then American counterpart, Barack Obama, “memes” of both of them started to go viral, comparing them to Winnie the. Pooh and his inseparable friend Tigger.

Another comparison between Xi and Winnie came in 2015 during a military parade, where a picture of a bear in a car was compared to the Chinese president, becoming the most censored picture of the year, according to political analysis firm Global Risk. Insights.

The childish character doesn’t seem to go down too well with the Chinese authoritieswho have been censoring him for several years without giving an explanation in this regard, although he adds that similar actions of the censors border on the extreme for some.