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Comment by oelmekki | Hacker News Reader

I think it's safe until we mention Winnie the Pooh. Woops.

Context: in his China segment, Oliver asserts that China has banned Winnie the Pooh from the internet because it was used to mock the president. And then he (Oliver) used tons of Winnie the Pooh references.

We already are seeing a lot of partisan arguments in this thread (as one could have expected, I guess). For my part, I don't care about the politics on this topic, I'm just glad someone stands up against internet censorship. Making tons of Winnie the Pooh references is the way to go, we must prove censorship doesn't work.

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It won't work, China is perfectly happy to block every external Web site as necessary. They're fine with relying solely on their internal network, they've structured things to that end as it is now. Censorship does work if you're willing to insulate your nation from external media, as they prove time and time again that they are. That's why censorship has worked in North Korea for nearly 70 years. It works if you're willing to pay whatever the consequences involved happen to be.

Or maybe not. As Oliver was mentioning, China is shifting from self focus to expansion. This is already something I thought when I saw the China sea quarrels.

If it's the case, it's not just only their population opinion that matters, but they need to have a good reputation in the world - that is, if they really want to be a part of it.

With US withdrawing from the world, China has a good opportunity. But the tyranny/autocracy archaism won't fly past their borders.

Except countries and companies will eventually cave as their trade and profits are at stake.

China is the world’s Factory. It also has a huge middle class population now. Basically the country is so rich, important and large, it doesn’t need to care about what the rest of the world thinks about it.

Kind of like US. We have an idiot running the country, but we have a strong economy so anything goes.

Chinese censorship is working so well, I bet a 100%, western nations will want to adopt its ideas.

> Basically the country is so rich, important and large, it doesn’t need to care about what the rest of the world thinks about it.

But yet here it is taking childish actions against a comedian, trying to make him and his joke disapear just because their feelings got hurt by a winnie the poo story.

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