What Did Xi Do After Learning The Winnie The Pooh Meme? What Happened Next Shocked The World

When people think of Winnie the Pooh, the first image that usually comes to mind is the adorable cartoon bear with a round belly and a lovable personality. But today, almost everyone around the world understands that this character has taken on another meaning, a reference to Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping. Today, let's dig into this massive internet story and look at how he gradually became a global meme. Let's go back to the summer of 2013. In June of that year, just a few months after taking over China's top position, Xi Jinping traveled across the Pacific to California, where he held a relaxed meeting with then-US President Barack Obama. The two leaders wore casual shirts and walked side-by-side on the lawn of the Annenberg Estate. A Reuters photographer captured the moment. In the photo, Xi Jinping on the left appeared rounder in build, while Obama on the right looked taller and slimmer. But this image reminded people of something. Shortly after the meeting ended, a comparison image appeared on Sina Weibo. On the left was the photo of the two leaders walking together. On the right was Winnie the Pooh with his round belly standing next to Tigger. The image immediately sparked excitement among Chinese internet users. They noticed that the shadows, walking posture, positions and even the overall feeling of the images matched almost perfectly. Who created it? The earliest account that can be confirmed was a woman using the username Nicaragua Rabbit, whose profile location showed Hong Kong. But she was simply the earliest identifiable person who posted the image. The true creator behind it remains unknown. Many people assumed internet users had simply found an old screenshot from a Disney cartoon that happened to resemble the summit photo. But James Fellows, a reporter for The Atlantic, used Google's reverse image search at the time and found that before the news photo appeared, there was no record online of that specific image from the show. In other words, it was likely created specifically for the comparison. The image quickly spread across Chinese social media. Influential online figures at the time reposted and commented on it, including Taiwanese investor Kai-Fu Lee and Chinese real estate tycoon Ren Zhiqiang. They praised how it looked similar in appearance and spirit and called it full of positive energy. However, what began as a friendly joke soon triggered China's online censorship system. Not long afterward, Nicaragua Rabbit received a notice saying that her Weibo post was not suitable for public viewing. She later posted a screenshot of the deletion notice, complaining that even such a harmless joke could not be tolerated. If censors had stopped there, the incident might have become a brief moment in internet history. But they didn't realize that their attempt to suppress the image triggered what became known as the Streisand effect. The more something is hidden, the more widely it spreads. On June 10th, a user named MissXQ shared the image on Twitter, along with information about what was happening in China. It was then reposted by Rich Olivier, a major account focused on Chinese internet culture. The image quickly went viral on Twitter. That same day, The Atlantic and BuzzFeed published reports about it. Later, the South China Morning Post, BBC, The Daily Telegraph and the UK Sun newspaper all covered the image and the deletion of the post. Nicaragua Rabbit even joked on Weibo that she had become famous around the world, joking, anyone who wants my autograph better hurry up before I get invited for tea. Looking back, China's online environment at the time was much more open than it is today. This carefree, lovable bear unexpectedly became a global symbol of political satire. And what happened next spiraled completely out of control. At the 2014 APEC Summit in Beijing, Xi Jinping's awkward handshake with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was quickly transformed by internet users into an image of Winnie the Pooh holding hands with a miserable-looking Eeyore. During the September 3rd, 2015 military parade, the solemn image of Xi Jinping standing in the top of a review vehicle and waving to the crowd was immediately recreated as Winnie the Pooh standing halfway out of a green plastic toy car. This time, users did not even need to add any explanation. Just four Chinese characters, meaning share image, were enough for everyone to understand the joke. It was reposted tens of thousands of times during the brief 96 minutes it remained online. From that moment on, Winnie the Pooh completed its first transformation. The character no longer needed to appear side by side with Xi Jinping as a visual comparison. It had become an unspoken codename for Xi Jinping across China's internet. What truly pushed this symbol onto the global stage and gave it a deeper political meaning was the historic moment in 2018 when the CCP amended its constitution to remove presidential term limits. Internet users stuck up a promotional image released years earlier by Disney China, showing Winnie the Pooh tightly hugging a giant honey jar. The caption read, find what you love, then never let go. A motivational phrase originally written for children became a sharp and precise satire of lifelong rule. Soon afterward, images of Winnie wearing a crown and sitting on a throne began spreading everywhere. Chinese authorities responded with a sweeping nationwide censorship campaign. Whenever Weibo users typed Winnie the Pooh, they received system messages saying the content was illegal and unable to be sent. Even Winnie the Pooh animation stickers were removed from the official WeChat sticker store. This extreme sensitivity ironically gave global media a vivid lesson in a political code word. Outlets including the Financial Times and Time magazine rushed to report that China banned Winnie the Pooh because he looks like Xi Jinping. This simple explanation allowed Western audiences with little understanding of Chinese politics to immediately grasp the internet shorthand for mocking China's top leader. The bear then began a rapid rise across the global entertainment and political stages. American late-night host John Oliver repeatedly mocked the comparison on his show, leading to HBO being blocked entirely in China. Disney's live-action film Christopher Robin was not approved for release in China. Taiwan-based game developer Red Candle Games sparked massive controversy after a hidden talisman in the game Devotion contained the phrase Xi Jinping Winnie the Pooh. The game was eventually removed worldwide, and its Chinese publisher had its license revoked. The most high-profile incident came on October 2nd of the same year, when the American animated series South Park aired its 299th episode titled Banned in China. The episode mocked Hollywood for constantly altering creative works to meet Chinese censorship demands. In the story, Winnie the Pooh and a pig are imprisoned in China. Later, the main character kills Winnie himself in an attempt to win approval from Chinese audiences. After the episode aired, the show, clips and related discussions quickly disappeared from Weibo, Youku and Baidu Tieba. The show's creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone then released a heavily sarcastic apology statement. Like the NBA, we welcome Chinese censors into our homes and into our hearts. We too love money more than freedom and democracy. Xi doesn't look like Winnie the Pooh at all. They ended the statement by promoting their upcoming 300th episode and jokingly asked, We good now, China? The following night, Hong Kong anti-extradition protesters played the episode publicly on a had come to represent how Chinese censorship could influence foreign films, television, video games, sports and businesses. From that point on, its spread no longer depended on Chinese internet users. In 2021, Malaysian singer Nay Mui and singer Kimberly Chen released the song Fragile, once again using Winnie the Pooh as a coded reference in its lyrics and music video. Their Weibo accounts were quickly blocked in China, but the song gained more than 30 million views on YouTube within just one month. That same year, NBA player Ennis Conter wore free China sneakers, designed with dissident artist Baidiu Cao, which also featured Winnie the Pooh. In 2023, a badge designed by Taiwanese businessman Xu Fuyu suddenly went viral. It showed a black bear representing Taiwan's anger, holding the Republic of China flag and punching Winnie the Pooh. Originally just a civilian product, photos of Taiwanese air force pilots wearing the badge were released during China's military drills around Taiwan. Orders surged immediately, and international media, including Reuters, rushed to cover the story. Because Winnie the Pooh had gained this specific meaning, China's own censorship system produced a series of absurd self-censorship incidents. In 2021, a child-hitted performer dressed as Winnie the Pooh at Shanghai Disneyland. In news reports about the incident, media outlets avoid using the word Winnie to avoid triggering censorship filters, and instead called the character Pooh Pooh Bear. Internet users immediately created another nickname for Xi Jinping, Xi Pooh Pooh. Over more than a decade, every deletion and every ban imposed by Chinese authorities has continued to inject new meaning into the joke. What began as a simple joke about the leader's physical appearance evolved into a protest against censorship, then a satire of authoritarian rule, and eventually a global pop culture symbol, challenging the power of the Chinese Communist Party. For Xi Jinping, it is undoubtedly the image he most wants erased from the internet, yet one that can never truly disappear. Whether he actually looks like the bear no longer matters. What matters is that the symbol itself has become an emblem of resistance. If Winnie the Pooh is the product of a collision between western pop culture and Chinese politics, then the names Xi Baozi and Qingfeng Emperor are purely made in China. In internet subculture, there is a term known as insulting bao culture. Here, the word insult does not simply mean personal attacks. Instead, it refers to a form of political satire with strong elements of deconstruction, aimed at challenging the perfect leader image created by official propaganda. The word bao means steamed bun, and it comes from a restaurant in Beijing called Qingfeng Steamed Bun Shop. The story goes back to noon on December 28, 2013. Under layers of discreet security protection, Xi Jinping suddenly made a public-friendly visit to a modest restaurant in Beijing. He personally stood in line, ordered his own food, carried his own tray, and ordered six pork and scallion steamed buns, one bowl of fried liver, and one plate of mustard greens, spending a total of 21 yuan. During the meal, he smiled and chatted warmly with nearby ordinary citizens who had been staged to be there. This unexpected PR event immediately became front-page news. It was heavily praised as a positive story, showing that the leader is connected with the people. Some people even created a tribute song called Steamed Bun Shop. The authorities hoped to use the event to build an image of a modern politician who was approachable and down-to-earth. But the logic of the internet has never followed official scripts. Internet users quickly saw through the staged performance and began referring to him as Xi Baozi, or Xi Steamed Bun. Over time, especially after he amended the constitution in 2018 to clear the way for indefinite rule, the joke evolved into satire, targeting his desire to remain in power. Combining the name of Qingfeng Steamed Bun Shop with imperial imagery, internet users gave him a mock imperial title, Qingfeng Emperor. As a result, both terms inevitably became sensitive keywords on the Chinese internet. In 2016, a Chinese student who had returned from overseas was reportedly secretly detained and disappeared for days simply because he wore a t-shirt with the words Xi Baozi written on it. In 2017, a user in Hunan was placed under administrative detention for using Xi Baozi as a reference to Xi Jinping. He was arrested under the charge of insulting party and state leaders. These aggressive punishments not only failed to protect the leader's dignity, but instead effectively confirmed to the public that Xi Baozi was a nickname officially recognized as referring to China's top leader. Xi Jinping's educational background has also long been a subject of public discussion and a major sensitive spot for authorities. This gave rise to another nickname, Elementary School Doctor. In 2018, Li Rui, a former senior CCP official who was 102 years old at the time, spoke openly in a hospital interview about the younger man he had watched grow up. Li said that Xi Jinping had left middle school before finishing his studies and went to the countryside during Mao Zedong's sent-down youth movement. He argued that Xi's actual educational level had effectively remained at the elementary school stage. Although these comments were harsh, they were based on historical accounts. However, Xi Jinping's polished official biography prominently states that he holds a doctorate in law from Tsinghua University. How did someone who had never completed middle school eventually become a doctoral graduate of one of China's top universities? The answer lies in the special worker-peasant-soldier-student pathway that was shaped by political privilege. During the Cultural Revolution, when university admission was based on recommendations rather than entrance exams, getting into college depended heavily on political background. As the son of Communist Party elder Xi Zhengxun, the doors of Tsinghua University were still open to him through the quiet support and behind-the-scenes arrangements of former associates. The doctoral degree he later received has also attracted controversy. While serving as governor of Fujian province and handling a demanding government schedule, he was able to pursue a doctorate at Tsinghua University without leaving his official duties. Traveling thousands of miles in the process. Even more controversially, his doctoral dissertation was titled Research on China's Rural Marketization. Although the paper was clearly within the field of economics, he was ultimately rewarded a doctorate in law. The perception of nepotism sparked strong public resentment. By contrast, another senior leader of the same generation, Li Keqiang, was among the first group of university students admitted He entered the law department at Peking University through academic merit. During university, Li was able to read English academic materials and translated the classic legal work The Due Process of Law by Lord Dunning. Compared side by side, Xi Jinping's doctorate appears far less credible. This objectively existing cultural gap has led Xi Jinping to develop a serious inferiority complex, which explains why he tends to overcompensate in this area. Although he's obsessive about listing book titles, once he moves away from carefully prepared speeches written by his staff, his actual cultural background is exposed in front of the entire nation. In 2019, at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, a host suddenly asked him how he would respond to Donald Trump's trade war policies. It was a straightforward question that could have allowed a leader to demonstrate his ability to respond under pressure. But faced with the unexpected question, Xi Jinping appeared nervous. He awkwardly opened the papers in front of him and muttered into the microphone, Let me see if I have this in the notes I prepared. The moment shocked audiences around the world. A leader governing a country of 1.4 billion people, appearing like a student caught off guard by a teacher surprise check. From that moment on, the phrase Xi's little notebook began spreading. From the cute and clumsy image of Winnie the Pooh, to the failed attempt at creating a down-to-earth image, to his insecurity about his education, to the public embarrassment represented by his little notebook, these globally circulated nicknames may appear to be nothing more than internet humor. But at a deeper level, they represent the long-running psychological battle between Chinese citizens and an authoritarian ruler. What dictators fear most has never been angry bullets, but genuine laughter from the people.