Peppa Pig gets banned from Chinese app for being ‘bad influence’

The cartoon character has become a mascot for disaffected youths whose attitudes are considered undesirable by the ruling party.

Peppa Pig’s ‘socialist values’ have been frowned upon in China.

Peppa Pig has been outlawed from a Chinese lip-synching app, after the cartoon character became a mascot for disaffected youths whose attitudes and outlook the Communist Party considers undesirable.

The Beijing technology firm Bytedance, which runs the Douyin app, has not officially confirmed the ban, but users found that searches for the cartoon suddenly stopped returning results on the video-sharing platform over the weekend. Before then more than 30,000 videos were available.

Bytedance has been under intense pressure from the government in recent weeks to censor content that does not promote what the Communist Party touts as “socialist values”.

Peppa Pig has become associated with the slang term shehuiren, or “societal people”, a euphemism for disaffected, unemployed youths. Youths who are shehuiren do not have steady employment and are seen as potential troublemakers who roam the streets.

Young adults have taken to having Peppa tattoos or wearing T-shirts bearing her picture.

Some of Peppa’s actions are considered subversive and replete with meaning. When Peppa abruptly hangs up on her best friend, Suzy Sheep, for example, the shehuiren see it as a veiled critique of what they consider false friendship common among adults.

The Times