Peppa Pig wins street cred, attracts censors in China
BEIJING—A cherubic British cartoon character has become an unlikely target of China’s censors as fans use her porcine likeness in rap videos and “gangster” tattoos.
The bright pink swine’s subversive alter-ego has made her a viral hit but also an apparent target of government workers who police the internet.
Videos with the hashtag #PeppaPig could not be searched Wednesday on Douyin, a popular video app. The catchphrase, “Get a tattoo of Peppa Pig, give a round of applause to ‘gangsters,’” was also not searchable on the Weibo microblogging platform, which posted a message saying it was acting “in accordance with relevant legal regulations.”
Regulators have been ratcheting up control over Chinese blogs and apps in recent months. A controversial cybersecurity law was introduced last June as part of President Xi Jinping’s efforts to tighten control over what China’s public can see and say online while still trying to reap the economic benefits of internet use.
It was not clear whether the censorship of Peppa on Douyin was prompted by a government mandate.
In a statement to The Associated Press, Douyin denied that it has “banned” Peppa Pig. But a source close to the company who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on its behalf said Douyin removed some user-generated videos featuring Peppa Pig that the company deemed inappropriate.
Internet users have aligned Peppa with the culture of “shehuiren”—literally “society people”—which connotes a gangster attitude and street smarts.
The Global Times, a state-run newspaper, wrote Monday that the moniker “refers to people who 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 (ruling Communist) Party tries to cultivate.”
Peppa Pig is not the first fictional creature to be targeted by China’s censors for political and sociological reasons. References to Winnie the Pooh were recently scrubbed from the internet after users began employing the cuddly bear as a proxy for the somewhat corpulent Xi when he engineered a move this year to remove presidential term limits from the constitution.