Taiwanese Boy Calls Xi Jinping 'Fatty' On Chinese TikTok, Finds His Account Blocked

A Taiwanese boy has claimed he was blocked from Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, for calling President Xi Jinping a "fatty."

The boy, possibly in his early teens, made the revelation during a street interview carried out by Taiwanese-Canadian YouTuber Daniel Ku.

In a video uploaded Monday on his YouTube channel 486 Street Polls, Ku is seen conducting street interviews in Taiwan about China's Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying's recent tweet that "Taiwan has always been a part of China" because Baidu Maps showed 38 Shandong dumpling restaurants and 67 Shanxi noodle eateries in Taipei.

The unidentified boy was the last to be interviewed in the 3:11 minute video. To Hua's remarks, the boy says the "Chinese propagandists are probably just talking nonsense."

Ku then tells the boy many children enjoy Chinese social media sites Xiaohongshu (Chinese version of Instagram) and Douyin, reported Taiwan News. He asks the child whether Douyin videos mention Hua's "restaurant theory," to which the boy replies he had the app on his phone, but not anymore.

When Ku asked whether he had mocked China, the boy smiled and said, "yes." He added he casually addressed the president as a "fatty" in a post, only to find his account has been blocked soon after.

"Before watching Douyin your mood starts out fine, but after watching Douyin your mood turns rotten," the boy tells Ku.

Douyin, made for the Chinese market, has strict content controls to comply with Chinese law and regulations. Recently, a former employee of Douyin's parent company ByteDance had claimed how they tried to develop an algorithm to censor livestreams in the Uighur language. According to the ex-employee, their work often was helping ByteDance build tools that help quickly remove content that may violate China's censorship laws.

Though Douyin's international variant TikTok distances itself from Chinese censorship policies, a 17-year-old user in New Jersey recently claimed she was locked out of her account after she posted a viral video criticizing the Chinese government's treatment of the Uighur ethnic minority. However, TikTok's director of creator community declined the allegations, and said they do not remove content based on sensitivities around China or other governments.