China bans Hololive members for saying "Taiwan"

"So even virtual, animated people can be cancelled for calling Taiwan a country."

- Chris Chappell, China Uncensored

On September 26, 2020, mh:hololive:Hololive VTubers mh:hololive:Akai Haato and mh:hololive:Kiryu Coco were banned from the mainland China and suspended for three weeks after they referred to their fans from Taiwan.

Background
In April 2020, Cover Corp., the parent company of Hololive Productions, the famous VTuber talent agency, announced its Chinese branch — mh:hololive:Hololive China. Because the CCP had banned YouTube before (which is the main operating platforms of Hololive VTubers), Cover used Bilibili, a Chinese video platform similar to YouTube, as the operating site for Hololive CN members. To boost the popularity of their new branch, Cover created Bilibili channels for several Hololive VTubers in Japan and linked their livestream from YouTube directly to their respective Bilibili channels.

During the end of the livestream on September 26, 2020, hosted by VTubers Akai Haato and Kiryu Coco, Haato checked the analytics of their livestream and noticed a large amount of Taiwanese viewers, expressing gratitude to them. A few hours after the livestream, Haato and Coco's account was terminated from Bilibili and both were banned from Mainland China for "inciting the hate and threatening sovereignity of the nation." Cover also announced that both VTubers had been suspended from streaming on their channels for 3 weeks due to "violating the guidelines of Hololive."

Reaction and Response
Following the ban imposed by the CCP and suspension by Hololive's parent company Cover Corp., responds from fans of Akai Haato and Kiryu Coco as well as most of the VTuber community were extremely negative, as they pointed out that both of them didn't referred to Taiwan in political context and their suspension is essentially a confirmation to the CCP's accusation — that they did something wrong while they actually did NOT. However, some fans argued that Cover's action was done to protecting their employees living in Mainland China (including their Hololive CN talents) from the CCP.

On Twitter, Akai Haato and Kiryu Coco's account was attacked by a group of Chinese ultranationalists organized to support their claims that their actions is "harming the heart of the Chinese people", which were later escalated into a full-scale cyber conflict after Hololive fans acknowledged the attack, which quickly spreaded into other social media platforms, such as Facebook, Reddit, etc.

Ironically, it was later found out that a large number of Taiwanese viewers shown in Haato's stream was in fact Mainland Chinese viewers using VPNs to watch the stream on YouTube and setting their location to Taiwan to prevent the lag.

In response to controversy and several raids, Cover Corp. has closed comment displays on all of their VTuber's livestream and informed their streamers to not reading any "provocative" words from the chat. Later, Cover announced that Akai Haato and Kiryu Coco would be lifted from their suspension on October 19, 2020.

On October 22, 2020, Cover announced that Hololive CN would be disbanded at the end of October. However, Cover allowed former Hololive CN streamers to keep their avatar when they became independent. However, after failed negotiation with the Ministry of Culture of China, and a counter-cyber attack from Hololive fans against mh:hololive:Artia (one of the Hololive CN member who's later revealed to be one of the head organizer of the raid against Kiryu Coco), Cover announced that every members of Hololive CN would be retired in November 13, 2020.

After the dissolution of Hololive CN, the CCP issued a ban on Cover Corp. from doing any business with Chinese companies. To this day, all Hololive members are unable to stream any game published by Chinese publishers.

On June 9, 2021, Kiryu Coco announced her retirement on July 1 of the same year following eight months of online harrassment.

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