TV fans angry after foreign shows suddenly pulled from popular Chinese video-sharing sites

Website Bilibili says British hits such as Yes Minister and The IT Crowd were removed due to copyright issues, but viewers believe it has more to do with Beijing’s campaign to ‘clean up’ the internet

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The 1980s BBC comedy Yes Minister, about an apparently clueless government minister and the advisers surrounding him, is one of the popular shows that’s been pulled from video-sharing site Bilibili. Photo: Handout

Published: 3:34pm, 13 Jul 2017Updated: 11:20pm, 13 Jul 2017

Chinese television viewers have expressed anger and frustration over the sudden disappearance of their favourite foreign shows from two of the country’s most popular video-sharing websites.

Bilibili – one of the biggest of the YouTube-style sites in China with more than 150 million active users – removed most of its TV shows made in the United States, Britain and Thailand on Wednesday. Deleted shows included two British hits, the 1980s political satire Yes Minister and more recent sitcom The IT Crowd.

All foreign categories that previously existed on the website, such as “American drama”, have also been removed.

Meanwhile, nearly all foreign films and TV shows have also disappeared from AcFun, another popular video-sharing website.

Bilibili said some shows were unavailable because it was reviewing whether they complied with regulations, without specifying what they were.

A customer service officer said earlier the videos were taken down because of copyright issues, and it was unclear whether they would be available on the site again in the future.