China's Weibo bans comedian John Oliver after President Jinping skit
China's largest social media network Weibo has blocked all mentions of John Oliver after he mocked President Xi Jinping on his show 'Last Week Tonight'. He slammed Xi's consolidation of power and China's human rights abuses in a 20-minute long segment on the HBO show. Soon, the microblogging platform censored all the posts referring to the UK comedian.
Oliver didn't mince his words while mocking China
In the episode that aired last Sunday, Oliver said that Xi's consolidation of power was driven by a "leadership cult". He also criticized China's moves to end presidential term limits. Further, he took a dig at China's One Belt One Road initiative and mocked its decision to ban the online images of cartoon bear Winnie the Pooh, that is said to resemble Xi.
Weibo scrubbed all posts containing Oliver's name since June 12
The ban was first noticed by a South China Morning Post-affiliated news outlet on Wednesday when its reporters were unable to post anything about Oliver on Weibo. Another media house found that the last post on Weibo about Oliver was on June 12.
