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Belts and Roads and Xi

As part of China’s drive to dominate Asia, Xi Jinping’s “Belts and Roads” initiative is tying up third world countries with unsustainable debt for dubious infrastructure improvements. Here’s my cartoon.

This cartoon will surely be banned in China. In fact, images of Winnie the Pooh are broadly censored in China because of memes depicting Chinese president Xi Jinping as Winnie the Pooh. This seems like a benign metaphor, but Winnie isn’t very smart and often gets his head stuck in the honey jar, so I can see why Winnie might annoy Xi. Here’s another recent one …

I think I’ll keep drawing Xi as Winnie the Pooh, just because of the allure of being censored in China. Xi is a great cartoon character, not just because he murders America’s spies and imprisons millions of Muslims and political dissidents, but because of Winnie the Pooh. This guy just makes me smile.  Here’s another Xi cartoon, showing Xi with his despot friends …

Xi’s not as funny when he’s not Winnie the Pooh.

If anyone in China can see my Xi the Pooh cartoons, please let me know and send me a screenshot – or send me a screenshot of what it looks like when my cartoons are censored in China.

I shouldn’t bash China too hard, lots of places censor my cartoons. Our whole site is blocked in Pakistan and Iran, and occasionally in other nations.  If Cagle.com or particular cartoons on our site are blocked in your country, please let me know and send me a screenshot!

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Trump Dances with China

I realize this cartoon is a bit ambiguous. Perhaps Trump is wrestling with China. Maybe Trump is “facing off” with China. Maybe there is something sexy going on with China that we can’t quite see. It is hard to tell. I went with “dance.” The USA will soon be adding another $250,000,000,000+ of tariffs to Chinese imports, which will move China to retaliate in other ways.

I draw lots of Trump-critical cartoons, but this one isn’t one of them. I think Trump’s approach to China is long overdue. I even posted this one as a “Trump Friendly” cartoon on our CagleCartoons.com newspaper syndication site – although, that is probably ambiguous too.

I’ve drawn Trump and a Chinese dragon before.

Dragons don’t have to represent China, although the chinese style dragons are more fun to draw. Here’s the dragon cartoon I drew the day after the election, when Trump defeated Hillary.

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TRUE Crazy Stuff 3!

Most of this new batch of my old TRUE panels came from my collection about entertainment and celebrities. I ended up killing most of these cartoons because they were so stale. I forget how different things were back in 1995. This edited batch of cartoons makes 1995 seem not so different from today – even though one cartoons shows a guy reading a book on the toilet; we may not read books anymore, but toilets haven’t changed much.

Star Trek is still familiar 23 years later. Mattel’s Barbie is still popular, but other toys in my TRUE cartoons are forgotten – for example Barney the Dinosaur was big in 1995. I forgot all about Barney. The first cartoon below is about Lassie, who we remembered as a doggie celebrity back in 1995. Do people remember Lassie now?

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TRUE Kids 3!

Here’s another collection of my TRUE cartoons about kids!

I’m loading my oldies into our PoliticalCartoons.com database, and making some editorial decisions on what to edit or cut. These TRUE cartoons ran in newspapers back in 1995. It is interesting to see how many of them hold up well over the years. Things don’t change much. The TRUE cartoons that look stale have land-line phones, phone booths, and old style televisions. I’m culling out the cartoons that refer to events and politicians in 1995 – after all, our database is an online store and I don’t think people will be interested in licensing stale cartoons. Political cartoons in general go stale fast, which is both a problem and a blessing for us.

See more TRUE cartoons:

TRUE HEALTH STATISTICS 1!

TRUE HEALTH STATISTICS 2!

TRUE KIDS!

TRUE KIDS 2!

TRUE WOMEN’S BODY IMAGES

TRUE HISTORY

TRUE! MARRIAGE!

TRUE MARRIAGE 2

TRUE BUSINESS

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Tariffs for China

In the crush of cartoons criticizing President Trump for his trade war with China, I haven’t noticed any that are supportive of Trump’s tariffs. Trump’s promises about tariffs and renegotiating more favorable trade agreements around the world were a driving force in his election. Frankly, I don’t mind the tariffs and the approach.  I consider this to be a mildly pro-Trump cartoon.

China had all they wanted in their trade relationship with the USA; Trump’s tariffs give China new and different things they want from America, that Trump should be willing to give up. That’s a negotiating tactic I see all the time as an artist working with businesses, but it seems to be lost on the pundits.

And I love drawing Xi Jinping as Winnie the Pooh – I’m going to stick with that. Here’s an earlier one.

 

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Xi the Pooh

limWinnie the Pooh is banned on the internet in China because the lovable bear, with a crown on his head, was used as a symbol to criticize Chinese president-for-life, Xi Jinping.

Xi really does look like Winnie the Pooh. China’s parliament recently voted to rescind term limits, allowing Xi to be president as long as he wants. The famous “great firewall of China” came to life to censor all references to Pooh to squelch any possible dissent. China also banned the letter “N” because it was being used in the equation “N > 2” with “N” being the number of terms that the president is allowed as “2” has been changed to infinity. Search terms were also banned, including “my emperor,” “lifelong” and “shameless.”

The great firewall of China also censored the term “#MeToo.” I suppose there must be many sexual abusers in China who feel they need broad protection from criticism. The emojis for bunnies and rice, and the term “#RiceBunny” are censored because “rice, bunny” (米兔) is pronounced “mi tu” in Chinese.

Most of the population of the world lives in nations, like China, where cartoonists are not allowed to draw the leaders of their countries. Cartoonists in some of these nations, such as Egypt, have invented little kings or generals to represent their leaders. I admire the passion of those who struggle to speak truth to power where truth is banned.

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Students vs the NRA

I’m impressed with the Parkland, Florida high school kids who are standing up to the NRA with impressive eloquence.

A couple of people tell me the kid’s ears are too big. Oh well. With the NRA its always something.

The Tank-Man from the Tiananmen Square massacre is a great metaphor that is seldom used for anything other than China. Standing up and speaking truth to power is what we should all strive for. The NRA likes to argue that they are a civil rights organization, standing up against those who would take away our constitutional rights. In fact the NRA is the establishment, controlling our legislators and putting us all in danger in the guise of patriotism. The kids see through the NRA clearly.

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Trump in China

Trump was in China this week. A large part of Trump’s presidential campaign was China bashing, but now Trump’s China bashing is warm and fuzzy, and a bit inconsistent.

I suppose it is obvious that I just wanted to draw a goofy Chinese dragon. I’ve done dragons a few times before. One of my favorites was the cartoon below, about the umbrella revolution in Hong Kong. I was looking at this dragon as I drew and colored today’s dragon, which is why they look like cousins.

I did a speaking tour in China where the audiences were very interested in how I depict China in cartoons. I told them I drew china as a dragon, or as the Great Wall, or as a panda bear, or as that guy standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square (which usually made the crowd gasp, because they don’t mention the Tiananmen Square massacres). At one venue I went through my list and a couple of guys in the crowd got very excited, waving their arms, saying, “Oh! Oh! What kind of dragon?!” That still strikes me funny, although I’m not sure why. I don’t know the answer to that question.

Here’s the dragon I drew when Trump was elected.

And here’s one I drew when Obama finally got Bin Laden, who was hiding out in Pakistan, protected by his Pakistani cronies, who should have also been seen as bad guys for hiding Bin Laden, but we just kept giving a bunch of money to Pakistan anyway.

I love dragons!

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Double Eagle

Yesterday I drew two cartoons with eagles. The first one is in response to the news of additional economic sanctions against North Korea, including banking restrictions that should put a crimp in the wallets of North Korea’s elites.

The next one is a Mexican eagle cartoon (the eagle and snake characters on the Mexican flag). Next to a weeping Statue of Liberty, weeping eagles are an editorial cartooning standard – so much so that we should probably avoid these cartoons, but when the times call for weeping eagle it is hard to say “no.”

About a month ago I vacationed in Mexico City with my family, staying in an Airbnb apartment in the La Condesa neighborhood which was one of the hardest hit in the earthquake. The scenes on TV look terribly familiar. It is a lovely neighborhood and the neighbors were all very nice; I’m not surprised to see the residents all pulling together in these difficult days. Such a horror.

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Kick Me!

Trump, Li’l Kim, Xi and Putin are a funny ensemble. One problem with editorial cartooning is that we can only draw characters that readers already know from the news, and if the cartoonist isn’t a sissy, he or she won’t label the characters but really try to draw caricatures. As the world goes down the tubes we have more characters and more opportunities to eschew labels. Life is good.

This cartoon is based on an oldie I drew about nine years ago, featuring Li’l Kim’s daddy, Li’l Kim Jong Il.

Sorry that I haven’t been drawing or posting much lately. I’ve been holed up in my office doing annual bookkeeping and quarterly artists royalties.  ARRRGH! I have more to do. I’ll try to poke my head out of the muck more often. In the course of all the accounting madness, I neglected to post the grim reaper cartoon below from about three weeks ago when the story of the moment was the GOP’s ugly healthcare bill.

I thought I was being clever at the time – until I saw that dozens of cartoonists were drawing grim reaper cartoons. Great minds think alike.  ARRRGH!

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Apple vs. the FBI and Third World Despots

The legal battle between the FBI and Apple promises to be epic. I come down on Apple’s side; we’ve seen how important technology is in undermining evil despotic regimes around the world. If courts can force tech companies to become foot soldiers in regime efforts to spy on their populations that will be a loss for freedom around the world.

apple-despots

I drew this one as a live stream. Watch me color it in Photoshop in real time in the YouTube video below (scroll past the timer at the beginning).

Click on the YouTube video below and it should start at 2:48:40 where I start drawing the Apple vs Despots cartoon. This was a long afternoon of work, and I drew the previous cartoon before this one. Sorry for the lack of editing, but hey, you see everything. I have nothing to hide.

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China’s Stock Market Crashes Down on Wall Street

The stock market took the biggest fall in many years last week as Chinese stocks continued their free fall. I drew this one yesterday as a live stream – well worth an hour and a half of your time to watch the entire drawing unfold in real time below!

I do the Photoshop coloring after I finish the drawing in the video, which is a little unfortunate because it would be nice to see the final art at the end of the video – but the scanning, cleaning up the scan and coloring is pretty boring. Here’s the final art …

china-drops-cagle-600

Follow my Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/PoliticalCartoons and my Twitter feed @dcagle where I’ll announce when I’m doing a new drawing stream!