Chinese censors have banned clips of Peppa Pig from one of the country’s leading video platforms after memes of the character were deemed to be too subversive.
Over 30,000 clips from the popular children’s cartoon show – which debuted in China in 2015 – have been scrubbed from the Chinese app Douyin (known in English as Tik Tok), with the hashtag #PeppaPig also banned by censors (via the state-run Global Times).
The cartoon has irked the powers that be for Peppa’s apparent association with Chinese counterculture memes which refer to the titular pig as shehuiren – a euphemism for gangster.
Video footage of Peppa Pig tattoos have become a strangely popular meme in China in recent times, while edited clips from the show have taken on infamy by showing the lead character speaking in various regional dialects. Some Peppa Pig memes have also entered either violent or pornographic territory – pornography is strictly banned in China.
The Global Times stated that people who upload videos of Peppa Pig-inspired tattoos and make jokes about the character “run counter to the mainstream value and are usually poorly educated with no stable job.
“They are unruly slackers roaming around and the antithesis of the young generation the [Communist] party tries to cultivate,” they added.
