China censors John Oliver: The Last Week Tonight host John Oliver came at China and now China’s coming back at him by erasing all traces of him from the Chinese internet, showing that Chinese censorship is still very much a thing.
China Censors John Oliver
On June 17th, John Oliver spoke on his show about Xi Jinping, the President of the People’s Republic of China. In regular John Oliver style, he joked about many of the things going on with China during his 20-minute segment on the Chinese government – something which the Chinese evidently did not approve of, considering Oliver has now been blacklisted on the Chinese internet, reports The New York Times.
Oliver spoke of Xi Jinping’s abolition of a governmental term limit, suggesting that those were put in place specifically to stop another Mao Zedong incident from occurring. Oliver didn’t stop there though; he discussed China’s policy on torturing political opponents, the Tiananmen Square protests, and many other topics China would seemingly prefer to be kept quiet.
Perhaps most noteworthy, now because of its irony, was Oliver’s comments on online censorship in China (the irony, of course, being that Oliver himself is now being censored in China).
Any post that attempts to mention John Oliver will now be met with an error message. After his segment on China aired, many in the country were talking about him – although, not specifically about what he had to say on his show – but the Chinese government is putting a stop to this now.
Not stopping at John Oliver alone, China has reportedly blocked the entire HBO website from being viewed by its citizens. It looks as though the page with Oliver’s segment is currently 87% blocked in China.
What do you think about all this?
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