Mao kinda sounds like "meow" (for English speakers at least) so I believe that's why there are some memes like this that portray him as a cat.

I don't know a whole lot about the meme itself, but the idea that Winnie the Pooh is banned in China is just made up and has no basis in reality. Xi has better things to do than ban cartoon characters that western libs associate him with.

By the way, good on you for asking questions and trying to learn. Please don't be ashamed or afraid of asking questions, people here are very kind and friendly!

I know the Winnie the Poo one was racism mixed with "communism is when government bans things" propaganda.

Winnie the Poo is not banned in China, nor was it ever (to my knowledge). The entire meme of it came from people (mostly white racists) claiming that Xi Jinping looked like the character on sites like Reddit and 4Chan, then on the same sites they claimed the meme was banned in China and was being suppressed by Reddit's moderation (it wasn't). Thus creating an urban myth that not only was the meme of Xi photoshopped next to Winnie banned, but Winnie the Poo as a character was also banned.

This whole thing comes down to Sinophobia, and the racist desire to believe anything that's being said about China.

The Winnie the Pooh meme actually came from China, probably with a different connotation to them.

The original Winnie the Pooh thing if I remember right is some Chinese netizen making this comparison in a positive light. Online racists decided to say Xi looks like Winnie the Pooh “because he’s round and yellow” and also a Winnie the Pooh movie was not brought to China because they only bring so many foreign movies in any year, and that’s where the anti-China meme came from.

The Winnie the Poo thing was never even actually banned, mao does mena cat, so I guess depends on how you represent him. It could be a cute

I think it is a good exercise to de-propagandize yourself to just select a single widely reported news story, and just spend a long time trying to find its sources and properly understanding it. Eventually you'll find out that a lot of it is just 10th hand reporting, with kilogramme of intentional or foolish mistranslation, mixed with severe incuriosity and self-righteousness. You might also learn a lot about certain countries are portrayed in the global English-speaking newscorps and their transnational branches and how that differs from the local realities.

As a good practical example with the "Winnie the Pooh" ban rumour, I once tried to source this article and its many clones that popped up. After a lot of searching, it turns out it was actually just an edit made by a small Chinese video game website on Weibo and that the bear didn't actually have an aura of white surrounding it in-game as many "Westerners" reported. If you google "Winnie the pooh kingdom hearts banned" you will see only those exact same pictures. Nevermind how blatantly racist this caricature is and how none of the news articles most propped up ever bother to give their sources, this fake story has escalated so far that lots of "westerners" will just straight up believe that Pooh was a white blob in a Japanese video game that doesn't even seem to even have an exclusively Chinese version.

My Chinese friends told me the meme isn't banned. A Chinese local store had the meme sticker put on the front although I'm not sure if it was their doing, although last I saw they didn't take it down so I assume so.

I'm not good with racism because I genuinely don't understand it as someone who is largely face and color blind memory-wise (I seldom ever remember colors), I just think the way Internet people act about China is blatantly hateful and disrespectful and the Pooh meme is just one symptom.