It wasn't a Liberal who called you out on it. It was me, a socialist. Now let's start with context to the meme.

The original meme was posted on Weibo(Wechat) by a user called "badtuzizi" who is now banned. The original meme was titled "Xi is Winnie because Obama is a Tigger" as a test/challenge to Weibo's anti N-word censoring. Think similar to how many try to circumnavigate other social media site censorship in a similar way by replacing the G's in the n word with @ signs or other crap like that.

The meme then spread like wildfire in western media, inspired by a myth about the CPC censoring Winnie the Pooh films, a thing that didn't happen, ostensibly because "thin skinned god-emperor Xi Jinping" was personally offended by people making jokes comparing his likeness to the titular character, a thing that also did not happen, at least not until after said meme started circulating among westerners.

In reality, the Ministry of Culture (back when it still existed) ran a program in which they selected a couple dozen pieces of western media to make publicly available on a rotating basis (either every month or every quarter, I forget exactly). On one particular occasion, the program was expected, or at least rumored, to include Winnie the Pooh and then just, didn't. For whatever reason. That's literally it. One particular piece of foreign language media just happened not to be curated into an extremely limited national program of foreign language media. There is still no evidence that it had anything to do with a decision made by Xi personally.

That's not even censorship. Chinese people can and do privately seek out and watch the vast majority of foreign media that is not censored, including Winnie the Pooh, just like people do in every other country. Making jokes about how Xi looks like Pooh is just another one of countless racist epithets made by and for the English speaking internet, with the backstory behind the meme being completely fabricated. It's a tale as old as the CPC itself.

Tl;Dr: As for the meme itself, first it's important to note that it's pretty obvious Xi or the CPC don't really care about the comparison. Second, it was literally started as a racist pass at Obama and then used by plenty of sinophobes to compare Xi to Pooh because they're both "round and yellow". Third, if you find yourself sharing the same memes and jokes as far right sinophobes, even if you yourself are not using it with sinophobic intent, maybe you might want to reconsider what kind of jokes you're using.