South Park creators brutally mock the NBA in faux apology after being banned in China

South Park's episode making fun of censorship in China has now gotten the show censored in China, and the creators have a bitingly sarcastic response.

The Comedy Central series' latest episode, "Band in China," satirizes Hollywood studios' tendency to tailor content to appeal to China's strict censors. Now, days after it aired, The Hollywood Reporter writes South Park has been completely scrubbed from the internet in China, with government censors "deleting virtually every clip, episode and online discussion of the show from Chinese streaming services, social media and even fan pages." As the Reporter notes, searching for South Park on Weibo, a platform similar to Twitter, yields no results at all.

Now, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have released a sarcastic fake apology for the episode, in which they also brutally mock the NBA. The basketball league recently released a statement distancing itself from Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey's tweet in support of the pro-democracy Hong Kong protests, sparking criticism that it was kowtowing to China. Parker and Stone clearly agree.

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"Like the NBA, we welcome the Chinese censors into our homes and into our hearts," Parker and Stone wrote. "We too love money more than freedom and democracy. [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping] doesn't look just like Winnie the Pooh at all."

In the South Park episode, Winnie the Pooh is imprisoned in a labor camp, reflecting how the character has been censored in China because of internet memes comparing him to Xi.

Given the infamously quick turnaround of a typical South Park episode, it wouldn't be surprising to see a response making fun of China even more as soon as the show's next episode, which airs Wednesday on Comedy Central.