US comedians poke fun at CY Leung's daughter, China censorship in Occupy news spoofs

Stephen Colbert, John Stewart and John Oliver all speak on Hong Kong's demonstrations

Reading Time:2 minutes

John Stewart speaks on Hong Kong's Umbrella Revolution. Photo: Screenshot via Comedy Central

Published: 5:15pm, 8 Oct 2014Updated: 5:55pm, 9 Oct 2014

Occupy Central and the Umbrella Revolution might have been Hong Kong protests, but they have provided a world of entertaining fodder for the late night comedians of American television.

Chief among these was Stephen Colbert, one of the chief "fake newsmen" of American television who frequently lampoons both American and international affairs in his programme The Colbert Report, a spoof on a typical television news broadcast.

In a segment that originally aired on October 1, Colbert spoofed everything from Hong Kong's upcoming 2017 Chief Executive election to pollution problems on the mainland.

"Protesters in Hong Kong are being attacked with tear gas - or as it's known in China, the sky," Colbert said.

Colbert also interviewed Louisa Lim, a former NPR and BBC correspondent and author of The People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited, a book detailing how references to 1989's Tiananmen Square incident have been muffled in mainland China.

When Lim informed Colbert that Instagram had been blocked in mainland China due to images of the protests, Colbert commented that it was probably because "Instagram has a filter that made everything look as if it were taken in Tiananmen Square in 1989".

Watch: Stephen Colbert speaks on Occupy Central here and here. (Note: Due to limitations on Comedy Central's video player, the clips may not be viewable in all locations.)