User blog comment:Watermint/Human names v. Country names (Wiki)/@comment-1271618-20100708223314

Actually, the panda replaced Tibet. But yeah, there was a scene in a Christmas episode where China received a Shinatty plushie from Finland. In the anime, they changed it to some generic pink cat plushie. The actual strips with Shinatty have yet to be adapted and likely won't. They did adapt the strip where the dragon draws a grin on a Hello Kitty doll of China's though (but blurred its face).

And yeah, it seems he's as banned as Korea is. Tibet too, but that's understandable.