The US sitcom Friends holds a unique place in Chinese pop culture.
It's one of the most beloved foreign TV shows in China and watching it was many Chinese fans' first exposure to American culture.
“I started watching Friends in year six and it means a great deal to me, just like a companion I grew up with,” long-time fan Amy Jing said.
“Before going abroad, I practisedย my IELTSย test (English language test)ย by watching Friends over and over again.
But fans like Ms Jing have been outraged this weekย over the censorshipย of re-released episodes of the program.
Major Chinese streaming sites, including Tencent, Baidu's IQiyi, Alibaba's Youku, and Bilibili, recently started showing a version of the first season of the show, its first re-release in China for several years.
But viewers quicklyย noticed parts of the long-running program were different to what they had seen before, including the removal of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans-related content, as well as mistranslations.
Fergus Ryan, a leading China researcher from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute,ย said the censorship reflectedย Beijing's concern about the country's declining birth rate.
Mr Ryan said theย Chinese government's efforts toย boost population growth by “getting rid of the one-child policy and introducing two- and three-child policies” were not working.
“[The censorship]ย is a part of the Chinese Communist Party's renewed emphasis on traditional gender roles, targeting non-traditional family values and culture,” he said.
Mr Ryan added the censors might have wanted to suppressย discussion of gender roles not focused solely on procreation, which could be prompted by the…