When Kingdom Hearts 3 launches next year, it will feature multiple cameos from the most well-known Disney franchises. This includes Winnie the Pooh, the honey-loving bear who was the headliner of the recent KH3 trailer. However, not everyone who plays the hotly anticipated game will be able to experience the bear's friendly personality.

Reports out of China have confirmed that in the Chinese version of Kingdom Hearts 3, Winnie the Pooh will be censored. Rather than removing the bear from the game altogether, the game has instead been edited slightly to blur his appearance. According to screenshots of the censored version, Winnie the Pooh just has a bright, white blot over his body. Strangely, the blot doesn't cover all of Winnie the Pooh as his feet are still visible, something which has been the subject of many jokes on social media.

Given that Winnie the Pooh seems harmless, many fans in the west are totally baffled over this censorship. However, the Chinese government has ordered this censorship due to its fear it will cause instability within the country. Back in August, China banned any depictions of the character after some compared Winnie the Pooh's appearance to that of Chinese president Xi Jinping. One of the memes compared a 2013 photo of Winnie and Tigger to a photo of Xi Jinping and Barack Obama walking together.

Kingdom Hearts 3 China Winnie the Pooh screenshot

In 2015, China also censored a Winnie the Pooh/Xi Jinping meme based on a photograph of the president at a military parade. This image became the most censored image of the year and, according to Global Risk Insights, the Chinese government saw it as “a serious effort to undermine the dignity of the presidential office and Xi himself."

China will feel that it is getting ahead of the curve here by censoring Winnie the Pooh in Kingdom Hearts 3 before anyone potentially makes a meme out of it. After all, Kingdom Hearts fans have shown their ability to make a meme out of the game's announcements, having mocked a previous release window announcement in disbelief that the game would release in 2018.

This isn't the only game that China has censored recently. Last month, Ubisoft removed some images from Rainbow Six Siege because of the country's strict rules on content, while sales of Monster Hunter World were recently suspended too. So, Kingdom Hearts 3 is unlikely to be the last game to be affected by the country's rules.

Kingdom Hearts 3 is set to release on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on January 29, 2019.

Source: Global Risk Insights