Yeah as far as I know the Winnie the Pooh thing originated in the PRC. Apparently Xi is really upset about it and did a hard ban on it. But it's kinda a Streisand effect kind of thing so places outside of the CCP's control kinda ran with it.

But the hexbears are just conditioned to say it's racist to try to shut down any conversation about it. I mean it's their tyrant using censorship for an extremely petty reason. I probably wouldn't call him Xi the Pooh myself if it weren't for the fact that this tyrant is so butthurt and petty about it. And that's what makes it hilarious. And fuck that guy.

Kind of reminds me of cultural appropriation gone out of hand, where Westerners feel the need to be angry at other Westerners for wearing Japanese Kimonos or Chinese Quipaos.

Yeah the whole cultural appropriation thing is weird. Sure it's wrong to trivialize something that holds a lot cultural or religious significance to others. But people generally like seeing others participate in their culture, and they'll let you know when something is sacred and not for a casual tourist to participate in.

When I went to Peru I bought a shirt from a tourist shop that was the local style. Everyone seemed happy to see that. One older woman said she was happy to see a westerner wearing the local style and invited me to a wedding. Approval all around... except for one guy that said I probably shouldn't be wearing that shirt. It was a white guy from the UK (judging from the accent).

And the kimono thing is really weird. When I was in Kyoto, anyone could dress up as a samurai or a geisha. Not only was it acceptable, the shops would give discounts to people dressed up this way. Because it made things more fun. This may be shocking to some people, but cosplay is fairly popular in Japan. I also saw some dudes in a park cosplaying as American 1950s geasers. Was I offended by this because they were appropriating our culture? Of course not, they seemed to be having fun and nobody dresses that way anymore anyway.

The idea of a blanket stigmatizing of western people having any participation in other cultures seems like it'll be a problem long term. If it's ok for everyone in the world to adopt western culture, but not ok for westerners to adopt anything from anyone else's culture, then western culture spreads and other cultures don't. Seems to me like what happens with colonialism, but this time with good intentions! But intentions doesn't change the result. And if the result is the spread of western culture while preventing the spread of other cultures, seems like a bad result to me.