Banned by Beijing, China's Comedians Are Finding Their Crowd Abroad

In China, a stand-up set has to clear a censor before it reaches an audience. Abroad, it only has to make people laugh.

The joke that erased a career

The comedian who performs as Chizi was one of China's most recognizable young stand-ups, a fixture of the televised shows that made the format a phenomenon during the pandemic. Then, in early 2023, he toured North America — Vancouver, Toronto, San Jose, New York and Los Angeles — and told jokes he could never have cleared at home, touching on censorship, COVID lockdowns and the treatment of Uyghurs, according to audience accounts reported by The Globe and Mail. Within days, his profiles vanished from China's biggest platforms; fans who posted photos with him saw the images deleted within hours.

A crackdown at home

Chizi's erasure came amid a broader chill. In May 2023, a Beijing comedian who performs as "House" borrowed a phrase from one of Xi Jinping's military slogans to describe his dogs; police opened an investigation, his management company was fined roughly $2 million and barred from performing in Beijing and Shanghai, and he was detained, CNN reported. Shows were canceled across the country. In China, licensed performers must submit scripts — and sometimes video — to regulators before going on stage, and censors have been known to attend in person.

The scene that grew up fast

Modern stand-up, known in Chinese by a borrowed name meaning "talk show," arrived in China's big cities only around 2017, distinct from the centuries-old crosstalk tradition of xiangsheng. It boomed on streaming competitions, but performers learned to steer around the "three T's" — Taiwan, Tibet, Tiananmen — and to keep to safer material about work, dating and family pressure. For those who crossed a line, or simply left, the exits led overseas.

A new stage in the diaspora

Now the act is finding rooms abroad. Comedians have taken confessional and political material to Chinese-speaking audiences in Australia, Britain and the United States, though the diaspora crowd brings its own caution — some performers have been asked to tone it down, the Associated Press reported. A feminist Chinese comedy collective founded in New York in 2022 has since expanded to Los Angeles and the U.K., staging shows — including at venues in Pasadena — built around material on gender, dating double standards and LGBTQ+ life that would face steep obstacles at home. Scholars note that humor's power is exactly what makes it threatening to censors: a punchline works because the audience already half-knows the truth it points at. For now, that laughter is coming from the other side of the firewall.