WUHAN, CHINA — Beijing got its feelings so hurt over some tweets posted by a Chinese student studying at the University of Minnesota, they actually threw him in jail the first chance they got.
According to a Chinese court document viewed by Axios, some of the tweets contained images deemed to be unflattering portrayals of a "national leader." Now what national leader could they possibly be talking about in China?
Axios reports the document says that in September and October 2018, while 20-year-old Luo Daiqing was a Golden Gopher, he used Twitter to post more than 40 comments "denigrating a national leader's image and indecent pictures," which "created a negative social impact." Some of the images which got some panties in a serious ruffle where Chinese propaganda slogans pasted over images of cartoon bad guy Lawrence Limburger.
Other pictures that helped land him behind bars were those of Winnie the Pooh, a cartoon that is off limits because Xi Jinping looks like the fat cartoon bear—except just more dictatory.
Chinese police snatched Luo in his hometown of Wuhan in July 2019 when he went back for summer break.
After months of just waiting in a fun-loving Chinese jail, he was sentenced in November 2019 to six months in prison for "provocation." According to Axios, the case represents a dramatic escalation of Beijing's efforts to shut down free speech abroad and a global expansion of a Chinese police campaign to hunt down Twitter users in China critical of the douchey government.