China's government can't take a joke, so comedians living abroad censor themselves
Comedian Xi Diao says he knows he should avoid talking politics on stage, but sharing a family name with Chinese President Xi Jinping makes it hard to resist.
Even his name is politically sensitive, the Melbourne-based amateur comedian tells audiences, setting up a joke about a group chat on the Chinese messaging service WeChat being shut down as soon as he joined it.
The 33-year-old civil engineer gets nervous laughs whenever he breaks a de facto rule of Chinese comedy: Don’t say anything that makes look bad. To most comedians, that means no jokes about censorship, no mentioning the president's name, and no discussion of China’s extraordinarily strict COVID lockdowns or
