No jokes about China – you will be banned!

Nigel Ng, the British-Malaysian comedian of Chinese descent, likes to play the role of “Uncle Roger”, the archetypal queer Asian “uncle” who struggles with life in Europe. He first went viral with clips like this:

He now has a successful international career as a stand-up comedian and has three million followers on Instagram.

All of the comedian’s social media accounts in China were blocked this week, apparently as part of a larger crackdown on comedians by the Chinese government.

Ng recently posted an excerpt from his stand-up show. In it, you can see him interacting with the audience in his role as “Uncle Roger” – including viewers from the People’s Republic of China (“Good country, good country… we should say that now.”) or Taiwan (“Not a real country! ») Then he adds that he’s probably “on the verge of cancellation”:

And promptly Nigel Ng’s Weibo and Bilibili accounts (China’s Twitter and YouTube) were frozen over the weekend. A post on his Weibo profile, where he has more than 400,000 followers, reads: “User may not post for violating relevant laws and regulations.”

Ng then reposted the video to Twitter, this time with the caption, “For some reason this clip got a lot of views last weekend. I wonder why.” He also immediately used the media attention to promote his latest stand-up show:

“Uncle Roger” is just the latest victim of an apparent crackdown on comedians by Beijing. A week ago, Chinese comedian Li Haoshi was arrested after he made a joke comparing his dogs to a military slogan. The company that hired him was also fined 14.7 million yuan (1.9 million Swiss francs), a disproportionate amount that raised fears that stand-up comedy could be wiped out in the country. Li has apologized for his comments, but still faces up to three years in prison.