Xi Jinping avoids the Hundred Acre Wood

Why does President Xi Jinping of China dislike being compared to Winnie-the-Pooh? The new film about Christopher Robin and his teddy bear has been banned in China, apparently because Chinese dissidents make the comparison. True, Pooh is a bear of very little brain, lacks leadership skills and is somewhat stout, but it seems a friendly thought all the same. Wouldn’t a dictator be pleased to be considered cuddly?

It is interesting that characters from children’s books are seen as subversive. Saparmurat Niyazov (‘Turkmenbashi’), the late dictator of Turkmenistan, passed a law banning anyone from dressing up as a hobbit. I wonder if, in Pooh’s case, there is some cultural misunderstanding. Have President’s Xi’s advisers on British culture in some way conflated (as I did as a child) Pooh-bear with Pooh-bah from the Mikado? A Pooh-bah echo would be doubly upsetting to President Xi since the original is both Japanese and useless.