Xi Jinping’s Nemesis Winnie the Pooh Joins China’s Anti-Regime Protests

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping’s arch-enemy Winnie the Pooh has been drawn into the anti-lockdown protests sweeping across China, thanks to a Disney T-shirt that coincidentally shows the banned bear brandishing a sheet of blank paper — which has become the symbol of resistance against the Chinese Communist regime.

Pooh, a noted honey aficionado whose base of operations has been narrowed down to approximately 405,000 square meters of woodland in Sussex, England, by Chinese military intelligence agencies, was banned from China in 2017 because he has certain physiological similarities to Xi. The wily ursin has been able to infiltrate China several times over the ensuing years, sometimes popping up in unexpected places.

A remarkable number of Chinese citizens have been protesting against their government ever since several families were killed by a fire in an apartment building sealed by a coronavirus lockdown last week. 

The demonstrators literally borrowed a page from the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests of 2019 by waving blank sheets of paper, both symbolizing their lack of free speech and daring the authorities to arrest them for saying nothing. The authorities have been willing to take them up on that dare.

Protesters, and their supporters beyond China’s borders, were pleased to discover the Disney Store in Japan is selling a Winnie the Pooh T-shirt designed by a Japanese illustrator that shows the beloved cartoon bear holding a blank sheet of paper. 

By a happy coincidence, the illustration looks as if Pooh is defiantly holding the paper aloft, just as the protesters do:

So, a colleague sent this—it's selling at the Disney store in Japan. https://t.co/pYboeH4M5e pic.twitter.com/b4cu8w4tEe

— Roy Ngerng 鄞義林 (@royngerng) November 30, 2022

The image of Pooh peering at his sheet of paper made its way into Internet memes a decade ago, to satirize people being perplexed or annoyed by something they were reading. The T-shirt at the Japanese Disney Store was evidently based on these memes when it was rolled out in April, long before the anti-lockdown protests began.

Connecting the Pooh shirt to the anti-lockdown protests has reportedly spurred a good deal of overseas interest in the item, which currently sells for 4950 yen ($36). The Japan Disney Store has sold completely out of phone cases bearing the same image.