Translation of the much talked about essay by Li Guangman:
Everyone Can Sense That a Profound Transformation is Underway!
China’s entertainment industry has never lacked for scandals that stink to high heaven. Taken together, the recent back-to-back scandals involving Kris Wu and Henry Huo, Zhang Zhehan’s “devil worship” at Japan’s Yasukuni Shrine, and now the rape allegation against Hunan TV host Qian Feng have made people feel that the Chinese entertainment industry is rotten to the core. Without a swift crackdown, entertainment will not be the only thing that rots—the arts, literature, culture, performance, film and television spheres will all follow suit.
In the past few days, yet another storm has struck the beleaguered world of entertainment: the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) launched a heavy crackdown on celebrity “fan clubs,” the State Taxation Administration (STA) fined actress Zheng Shuang 299 million yuan [$46 million] for tax evasion, and Zhao Wei and Gao Xiaosong were banned and deplatformed. What does this heavy blow against the entertainment world portend?
On August 25, the CAC issued
aimed at cleaning up chaotic celebrity fan clubs: first, cancel celebrity and artist rankings; second, optimize and adjust ranking rules; third, strictly regulate entertainment agencies; fourth, standardize fan group accounts; fifth, ban doxxing; sixth, clean up groups that violate regulations; seventh, ban enticing fans into making purchases; eighth, tighten programming regulations; ninth, strictly control participation by minors; and tenth, standardize fan fundraising. The guidelines specifically call for [all localities] to improve their political stance while ensuring political and ideological security online, creating a “clean” cyberspace, and advancing the work of cleaning up chaotic fan clubs. As this is obviously a political action, all localities must view this rectification campaign from a larger political perspective.
Not coincidentally, on August 27, the STA announced their decision in actress Zheng Shuang’s tax evasion case. Their investigation found that Zheng Shuang signed a 160 million yuan contract to star in the 2019 television series “A Chinese Ghost Story.” She was subsequently paid 156 million yuan in two installments. She falsely reported the first installment of 48 million yuan as corporate income rather than personal income, thus evading taxation. For the second installment of 108 million, the producers signed a fake contract with a company controlled by Zheng Shuang and made payments structured as “capital injections,” enabling her to avoid industry regulators’ oversight, receive “sky-high remuneration,” conceal her income by filing false reports, and evade taxation. Over the course of “A Chinese Ghost Story,” Zheng Shuang evaded 43.027 million yuan in taxes, and underpaid another 16.1778 million yuan in owed taxes. The investigation also found that, after the film and TV industry revised its income and taxation structures in 2018, Zheng Shang again disguised 35.07 million yuan in performance fees by falsely reporting them as corporate income rather than personal income. The facts are that Zheng Shuang evaded 2.2426 million yuan in taxes, and underpaid another 10.3429 million yuan in taxes. In total, from 2019 to 2020, Zheng Shuang failed to report 191 million yuan in personal income, evaded 45.27 million yuan in taxes, and underpaid another 26.52 million yuan in taxes.
In accordance with the relevant laws and regulations, Zheng Shuang has been ordered to pay 299 million yuan in combined taxes, late fees, and penalties: 71.7903 million of this is unpaid taxes and 8.8898 million is late fees. For the portion of her income that she misrepresented in order to evade taxes, she was fined 30.6857 million yuan, or four times the misrepresented amount; for the portion of her income that she attempted to conceal by falsely reporting it as a “capital injection,” she was fined 188 million yuan, the maximum penalty of five times the falsely reported amount. According to the Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China, the tax agency will hand her case to the police should she fail to pay in time. The National Radio and Television Administration subsequently issued a notice requiring TV broadcasters at all levels to stop airing any programmes in which Zheng Shuang appeared, and to ban her from participating in future productions. Lately, Zhao Wei [Vicky Zhao], no stranger to the headlines, is in trouble again. On August 26, Zhao Wei’s “super topic” page disappeared from Weibo and her name was deleted from the credits for “My Fair Princess,” “Romance in the Rain,” and various other films and television series on Tencent and iQiyi.
By rights, Zhao Wei should have disappeared from the Chinese public eye twenty years ago, but instead, she has thrived. Twenty years ago, she became the target of an internet-wide crusade for wearing a dress emblazoned with the “rising sun” flag of the invading Imperial Japanese Army. But rather than being banned, she somehow became a mover and shaker in China’s capital markets, hailed as China’s “female Warren Buffet.” Back when she was rubbing shoulders with Jack Ma, Wang Lin, and other titans, she was able to control public opinion and routinely had unflattering news stories about her scrapped before publication. Later, when she directed “No Other Love,” she cast the die-hard Taiwan independence advocate Dai Liren [Leon Dai] as the male lead and the anti-Chinese actress Kiko Mizuhara—who supports praying at Yasukuni Shrine—as the female lead, thus incurring the public’s wrath. What strikes one as odd is that the whole thing blew over so quickly. Recently, Zhang Zhehan, an actor signed to Zhao Wei’s production company, appeared at Yasukuni Shrine multiple times, performed a Nazi salute, and cozied up to Japanese right-wingers, triggering a national uproar in China. The question remains how Zhao, despite so much negative publicity, was not toppled sooner. It was puzzling, but now we can look back and see: retribution had to bide its time.
Gao Xiaosong, another American whose works were deplatformed at the same time as Zhao Wei’s, has long been broadcasting programs such as “Xiao Speaks” and “Xiaosong Pedia” on Chinese television and the internet. He spouts utter nonsense about history, bends the knee to worship America, and has hoodwinked a certain group of Chinese into becoming his fans.
What sort of feeling do we get, just by looking at the events of the last two days—the crackdown on fan groups, Zheng Shuang being fined, and works by Zhao Wei and Gao Xiaosong being banned and deplatformed? If we take a broader political perspective on this series of events, we can discern a historical and developmental trend.
Consider the suspension of Ant Group’s IPO, the central government’s antitrust policies and reorganization of the economic order, the 18.2 billion yuan fine levied on Alibaba and the investigation of Didi Global, the grand commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, the proposed path to common prosperity, and the recent series of actions to clean up the mess in the entertainment industry. What these events tell us is that a monumental change is taking place in China, and that the economic, financial, cultural, and political spheres are undergoing a profound transformation—or, one could say, a profound revolution. It marks a return from “capitalist cliques” to the People, a shift from “capital-centered” to “people-centered.” It is, therefore, a political transformation in which the People will once again be front and center, and all those who obstruct this people-centered transformation will be left behind. This profound transformation also marks a return to the original intent of the Chinese Communist Party, a return to a people-centered approach, and a return to the essence of socialism.
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