A joke that goes wrong. On Wednesday, Chinese authorities fined Xiaoguo Culture Media producing comedian Li Haoshi 14.7 million yuan (nearly 2 million euros). The reason? One of his jokes indirectly targeted the Chinese military during a stand-up show. Li Haoshi, who performs under the name "House," had referred to a slogan of the People's Liberation Army during a show Saturday in Beijing.


Beijing police said Wednesday on Weibo that they had also opened an investigation into Li Haoshi, "in accordance with the law." Xiaoguo Culture Media was fined 14.7 million yuan (1.9 million euros) and all its shows are suspended indefinitely in Beijing and Shanghai.


'Inappropriate metaphor'


Authorities have also threatened the company with legal action in a country where freedom of expression has been drastically curtailed over the past decade under Xi Jinping. According to Beijing's municipal office of culture and tourism, the fine follows an investigation it conducted after a bystander testified and found the joke broke the law and had "a bad social impact."


The Chinese president, throughout his tenure, has promoted muscular nationalism and made strengthening the armed forces a political and economic priority, touting their power in national propaganda campaigns. The production company and the comedian had already apologized before the sanction was announced Wednesday, calling the joke an "inappropriate metaphor." "We have asked Li Haoshi to reflect on himself and halted all acting work until further notice," Xiaoguo Culture Media said in a statement on Monday.


The city's culture and tourism board, however, ruled that the joke violated the rule that shows must not "hurt national feelings" and "harm national honor and interests." "We will never allow any company or individual to gratuitously denigrate the glorious image of the people's army on the stage of the capital, (and) hurt the deep feelings of the people towards their army," the authorities said.



On Weibo, a heavily censored social network where problematic content is usually removed quickly, many comments supported the sanction as "just punishing someone who makes mistakes". A hashtag on the subject was Wednesday the most viewed on Weibo with more than 700 million searches.

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