Read on Twitter
So, probably gonna out myself as a bit of a weeb in this thread but I think it's worth bringing China Twitter's attention to nonetheless. So, in the past day or so there's been a fairly notable controversy (to put it mildly) involving Kiryu Coco, a fairly prominent VTuber.
For those of you who aren't familiar with VTubers, or Virtual Youtubers, they're basically folks who use an anime-style avatar to stream games and other activities (very similar to your average twitch streamer). Pretty harmless stuff.
It's generally pretty common for these streamers to be managed by a parent company-- in this case @cover_corp who do promotional work, etc. on behalf of the streamers.
In any case, the current controversy arose when Coco mentioned offhand in a stream that 5% of her donations come from Taiwan. Shortly thereafter, her account was suspended by Cover Corp.
The rationale that they gave was that she discussed her channel analytics on her stream, which is apparently forbidden under the terms of her contract.
However, this appears to have been merely a pretext, as Cover Corps maintains a fairly robust presence on Bilibi, in addition to operating a branch specifically catering to Chinese-speaking fans.
In the English and Japanese versions of their apology statements (linked here), Cover Corps merely noted that statements made their employees were "insensitive to people living in certain regions." https://cover-corp.com/2020/09/27/200927-1/
However, the statement that they released via Bilibi was much more explicit, stating among other things that Cover Corp "firmly supports the One China Policy, and has always respected China's sovereignty, the Japan-China Joint Communique,...
... and the Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Japan and China" as well as emphatically stating that they "respect the feeling of the Chinese people."
https://t.bilibili.com/439666396115075371?tab=2
https://t.bilibili.com/439666396115075371?tab=2
In response, there's been an outpouring of vitriol from PRC-based viewers who have demanded that Cover either cut ties with Coco or withdraw from the Chinese market entirely. In addition the streamer herself has been subject to some fairly vile harassment from those same viewers.
So, all in all, extremely disheartening. I'm not an expert on Sino-Japanese relations, or Japanese contract law, or even VTubers for that matter. But I think this goes to show that no hobby community, no matter how niche, is immune to self-censoring to appease the PRC market.
