Sad Reality of Female Stars in China

This is Chou Tzu-yu, or Chu-yu, a Taiwanese singer from TWICE, a Korean girl group. She was 16 at the time she was essentially forced to make a TV confession. The reason was that she held a Taiwan flag publicly and it was reported on Chinese social media and they started a witch hunt against her, boycotting her event, boycotting her company, and of course her agency had to come out and do this confession video. Now, back then I remember watching this for the first time. It was honestly my first real taste of the disastrous and actually disgusting reality of Chinese entertainment because I really honestly before then didn't really care much, didn't watch a lot of Chinese drama, don't even know who Chinese celebrities were, which ones they were. So that was the real first shocker for me. And this is Ouyang Nana, another Taiwanese celebrity who's very active in mainland China and she and along with 8 other Taiwanese nationals basically posted on Chinese social media in support of the recent Chinese military drill around Taiwan. The reason I wanted to start this episode with these two examples, not because they were Taiwanese, but because it precisely highlights, and I generally think many of you would agree with this question, which is, can we just not separate politics from entertainment and keep those two things separate? Well, that's a really great question. I hope this episode can provide some insights into why that might not be possible when it comes to China and entertainment industry in China. Also, if you guys like this type of social topics, let me know in the comments, like the one I recently did about China's weird marriage situation. Yeah, let me know in the comments. Or if you want to see more about the entertainment stuff, also let me know in the comments. Now, like I mentioned, these two girls are not Chinese nationals and to work in the Chinese market as an entertainer, it means that you have to 100% comply with their political ideology and not just the entertainment ideology. So as you guys probably know that I recently did the poll for this and there were four subtopics. The most popular one or the number one choice of it was the sad reality of Chinese female celebrities. So we'll start with that one, but I'll try to cover some of the other three as well. And so this video is more like an overview with a focus on the female celebrities that is. Oh, this also reminds me after watching this video, it's a pretty dark and sad topic. Go to the link in the description. I promise it's going to be eye bleach for you. This is Shen Yun, a New York based classical Chinese dance performance, and they just uploaded a 20 minute segment of their recent demonstration of skills and techniques. And I promise you it's going to be a fresh contrast to our topic today. Now, if you're curious about Shen Yun, the world touring classical Chinese dance troupe from New York, and you're not so sure what exactly it is, well, this is the great opportunity for you to find out. So Shen Yun specializes in what's called the classical Chinese dance in this rare event, which was recorded on September 17th on the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival at Shen Yun's training camp in north of New York City. The dancers showcase their dazzling techniques, their agile movements are on par with the world's top athletes and gymnasts. Now, I hope you enjoy it. So there's really only two things facing Chinese celebrities in China, and everybody is sort of in the different stages of it. The first one is an open secret, and this is what you would call the Chinese Me Too movement, or the Harvey Weinstein effect, or as the Chinese, the translation of it, it's called the Hidden Rule. Now, it's been like this for decades, and it starts even in film school. So I have a colleague who told me that when he was in college for acting, over the weekend or like after a class on a Friday, there would be these black sedans that show up in front of the schoolyard, and all these girls would run into, you know, sprint to the cars and they get picked up, and they're gone for the weekend, if you know what I'm talking about. And so this then also extends into different aspects of society, not just in the entertainment industry, but in particular in the entertainment industry in China, the Hidden Rule or the Me Too happens with actresses and producers, directors, and the special one here, in a negative way, of course, is with CCP officials. Now, this also extends into other areas of stardom, like athletics, news, and even, you know, just sort of like music industry slash kind of like comedic, you know, all the other parts of the entertainment world. So, you know, one of the most famous case I can remember from a decade ago was a CCP official named Zhou Yongkang. He was notoriously known to be around news anchors, state media news anchors. And there's the former CCP chairman Jiang Zemin, who is the frog. He's photographed all the time just looking at girls, one of the most famous one being Song Zuying, this singer from China. And remember the case of Peng Shuai, right? That really shocked the world. The tennis star from China spoke out about her experience with the CCP official, and what happened to her? Well, she was censored, she was disappeared for a while, she was controlled, and they even staged this photo shoot where it showed she was dining out. But it clearly looked like she was very flustered and looked very staged. So the message is that women in China, when they're in the public eye, any sort of little sway from their line is bound to have something happen to them. You know, there's I love this. Sometimes they talk about how come there's no female CCP officials at the top level? Well, the truth is the CCP doesn't care about things like feminism, doesn't care about things like female equality or just equality in general. They actually see girls as play toys, right? The reason why there's no CCP official that's female at the very top of the CCP's decision making body. Well, because it's a very unequal view of this whole gender situation. And then when females peak in some way, they start getting in trouble. I have two examples. They're both female actress from China, and I'll talk about them in detail. The first one, her name is Fan Bingbing, and the second one is Zhao Wei. So let's first talk about Fan Bingbing. Actually, it was announced today, or at least news media reported that she has for the first time returned to films since 2018, when she was censored, blacklisted in China over tax evasion. What happened was there was some sort of a black and white contract difference of how much she was paid. And since that was public, she has been blacklisted in China. She went to Malaysia and Thailand and did these like ambassadorial work, but she wasn't allowed to release films in China anymore or starring films in China. What's interesting is that it's always something to do with tax evasion when they try to ding the female. For the men, like the Chinese men, the actors and stuff, it's like, you know, sexual assault or some really bad thing, right? But for females, it's always tax evasion. But here's the catch with her, right? So the problem is in China, these entertainment contracts, it's signed between Party A and Party B. So Party A is the producers. Party B is the director and actors. So and actually these contracts, they're after tax. So whatever the amount that they get paid is after tax. So technically, there's no such thing as tax evasion for her because she's getting paid on salaries or on how much she's making after tax. It's not like Fan Bingbing herself actually got more money. Keep that thought, okay? Fan went from being probably the most recognized female celebrity from China and even internationally. At one point during her career, she was averaging 8.3 movies per year. Think about that, okay? 8.3 movies per year. Most well-known actresses maybe do one film every two, three years, okay? She was doing eight. Now, you might have heard some of her international movies too, like X-Men, Days of the Future Past, I think she was in it. She was also in the Chinese version of Iron Man 3, I believe. But the thing is, even if you ask a regular Chinese person, they might not have heard of half of her movies that she's done in China, okay? So here's the weird thing. Now, she does have a nickname called Daddy Rich Fan or Rich Daddy Fan. Basically, in one of the interviews, she said that she doesn't need to marry into a rich family. She is a rich family herself, okay? So the internet users gave her a nickname, Rich Daddy Fan. Although she did apologize in 2018, it wasn't enough. She was blacklisted, like I said. But the thing is, right? Tax evasion is never the main reason the CCP blacklists someone. It's like, for the CCP officials, corruption is never the main reason that they're actually getting caught. When female stars peak in China, it's because there is a strong political backing, this strong political hand behind her, supporting her. That's why she had the audacity to say those things like, I don't need a rich family, I am a rich family myself. And because things like feminism and girl power, they simply don't exist in that environment, she's not doing this out of the audacity of trying to promote feminism or things like that. So let me finally get to the point, okay? Her downfall is likely because whatever political hand was supporting her has been crushed. Now, here I have to kind of explain a little bit of context to the entertainment industry before we finally get to our conclusion. I know, bear with me, okay? So in the early days of Hong Kong, its film industry, how it got started was essentially you had these gangs that needed to launder money. And so the quickest way to do so is to buy into movie production. So you get these movies made in two, three months. And that's how people like Jackie Chan, Stephen Chow, and a lot of these other Hong Kong celebrities rose through the ranks in the 80s and 90s. And they often did, you know, things like casino movies, criminal movies, good cop, bad cop movies. A lot of that material is really based on the source, right? So what they were doing was essentially laundering money, right? They're washing the cash from black cash to white cash, and they can use it. That was the model of the Hong Kong entertainment industry, for film industry, or at least. What China did in the early 2000s when they commercialized it was they essentially copied that model. Now, the thing is, when they did that, right? You see how Y Fan Bingbing's eight movies per year is kind of suspicious, right? When they did that, you're able to get things like a turnover production rate of two, three months per movie. And my favorite part of this is that you're not really laundering money for the gangs anymore when it moved to the mainland. You're now laundering money for the powerful CCP-bred families. So naturally, you get politics injected into this whole money launder. Back in Hong Kong, they were just washing money. But when you add politics into it, now you're washing the brains, too. So you're brain laundering as well. So that's when things got really complicated as the mainland industry rose. And by the way, if you want a more in-depth video on the entertainment industry stuff, let me know in the comments as well. OK, so what I'm getting now is that Fan Bingbing is likely a victim in the sense that she was just a pawn for somebody to launder money through these black and white contracts. And like I said, because the powerful hand behind her had been crushed, she no longer had the protection, the umbrella to shield her from danger. And that's why they use the excuse of tax evasion, because she's been doing this for many years. You don't just find out about this instantly or just now. OK, so I mentioned there was a political injection into the industry, right? This photo was widely circulated circa 2021. And the man in the middle, his name is Zeng Qinghuai. He is basically the mega boss of both the mainland and the Hong Kong entertainment industry industry since the 90s. And he belongs to the Zeng faction, which is a very powerful faction. The girl beside him who's got the arms wrapped around him is Zhao Wei, which is the second female celebrity that I'm going to talk about. So Zhao Wei, another Chinese actress, super well known. She was blacklisted in 2021. No explanation given. She's a billionaire. She started a lot of different businesses after her career took off. Besides that, she essentially is very known in the industry to have a lot of friends, ranging from known billionaires like Jack Ma to other investors, venture capitalists, things like that. OK, now there's been a lack of explanation as to why Zhao Wei was blacklisted. All of her films were scrubbed. Her descriptions were scrubbed. She basically vanished into thin air. They like literally took down all of her films. She is a little bit different than Fan, though, right? So although she wasn't financially found to be guilty of doing things like money laundering related stuff, or at least they don't say it's money laundering, what she was likely doing was that she was expanding influence across the board so much that it started to reach over the top like her influence in entertainment. Other financial industries was too wide reaching. It began to threaten the party. It's the same nature as to why other Chinese billionaires disappear like Jack Ma. She thought she was invincible to the hand of communism. But obviously, she wasn't. Even if she was famous, it doesn't really matter. Now, this is very interesting because I grew up watching her. There was a famous drama. It had three seasons. It was called My Fair Princess, I believe. Actually, both Fan and her starred in that movie, and it really kickstarted both of their careers. And maybe that movie is cursed or not movie, the drama. That's kind of like the sad reality of the female stars. Let me now talk about the political side a little bit more. So when you're a celebrity in China, you obviously have to adhere to the principles of the party, the guidelines for propaganda and all of those things. A hundred percent, right? If you sway a little bit, you are immediately blacklisted. Of course, that's like a very low level thing. Some of the stuff include things like supporting yourself through all of the political movements, you know, COVID lockdowns, the 2020, 2019 Hong Kong protests, right? You have to do a lot of those things. The thing is that entertainers in China seem to think that they can get away by simply saying, let's avoid all the political trouble. Things that we have to comply with, we will. And we keep ourselves quiet so we don't draw trouble to ourselves, right? But that's not how it works. The way that the CCP works is that if you grow to be more influential, you start to develop this cult of personality called a fan base, right? Or if you start to have more views or drawing more times away from the party, right? People are listening to your songs, watching your drama, watching your movie. That is essentially delegitimizing or that is threatening the CCP and their influence. So then you start to get into this territory of, yeah, you might want to go down a notch or you might face some trouble. Again, I'll use the example of Jack Ma because at one point he thought he was powerful enough. He was like Jeff Bezos of China. He can criticize the government, no problem. They're not going to blacklist him, right? But then look what happened. He disappeared. And then he came back. He was a lot quieter. So the reason is they won't let somebody like an Elon Musk or Taylor Swift exist too long in China because it's not beneficial for the party. It doesn't give them any leverage over the people. And in fact, actually makes them less controllable or makes the party less desirable. And you often include things like you have a lot of Western influence and all of those things, right? So that's why they're cracking down on the whole idea of fan culture, too. All right, that's it for today. If you enjoy the content, let me know in the comments if you want to see something more like this or if you want an in-depth video on the entertainment industry in China and Hong Kong or something else. And also make sure to click the link in the description to check out Shen Yun's 20-minute performance exclusively on Ganjing World. All right, until next time, have a good night. Take care. Bye-bye.