While YouTube is blocked in the country, no clips of the show could be found on any Chinese streaming sites either.
HBO’s website has been banned in China after John Oliver on his HBO show ‘Last Week Tonight’ called the Chinese President, Xi Jinping the creepy uncle who imprisons 800,000 people in his basement.
The focus of Oliver’s show on Jun 17 was Xi. During the 20 minute segment, he commented on the Chinese President’s apparent sensitivity to being compared with cartoon character,Winnie the Pooh.
The comedian also criticised the Chinese President for removing the term limits from the Chinese Constitution and imprisoning Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo. Liu died last year while serving an 11-year prison sentence for writing a pro-democracy manifesto. Post his death the Chinese government deleted all social media posts that mentioned his name fearing backlash.
According to a report in The Guardian, a Chinese micro-blogging site, Sina Weibo, had blocked posts mentioning John Oliver and his show.
The anti-censorship and monitoring group, Greatfire.org, said that the HBO website was completely blocked within China.
While YouTube has already been blocked in the country, no clips of the show could be found on any Chinese streaming sites either.
HBO Asia’s website also appears to be blocked. HBO Asia is a Singapore-based broadcast network which airs HBO content in China through Dingjijuchang, a Tencent TV subscription service. HBO is yet to comment on the ban.
