China’s Film Industry Loses A Fan

IT WOULD NOT be too idle speculation to connect the non-appearance in public of the film star Fan Bingbing these many weeks to the suggestion that the anti-corruption crackdown has reached the heart of the media and entertainment industries.

Her studio as denied the accusation that Fan was using what is known in the trade as ‘yin-and-yang’ contracts — two versions of the contract for an engagement of which the one showing the lower fee is the one intended for the taxman. Their use has been widespread in real estate transactions for at least a decade, not that that makes them any less illegal.

There is, it should be said, no hard evidence either way on which to judge the scuttlebutt that tax evasion was Fan’s ‘crime’, for which, some reports say, she has been arrested, while others suggest, less credibly, that she has fled to the United States to seek asylum. Fan’s public silence would, however, seem to tell its own story.

China’s highest-paid actress did, however, score zero on a recently released ranking of entertainers based on their social responsibility scores. Those can be regarded as a precursor to the ‘social credit’ system now being trialled with the aim of introducing it nationwide by 2020. Low scores could mean for an actor denial of the state licenses they need to work, and provide an easy excuse to film and TV programme makers not to offer parts.

Fan has already been dropped by sponsors, a sure sign she has fallen out of favour with authorities.

Catching tigers as well as flies is a characteristic of President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign. In June, authorities put limits on the pay of star actors, in part to crack down on tax evasion but also as part of the broader campaign against conspicuous wealth. The pay of actors in Chinese films and TV programmes was capped at 40% of the total production costs, with lead actors limited to 70% of the actors’ pool.

Authorities are also worried about the impact of stars on young Chinese, who are at risk, they fear, of chasing celebrity and “distorted social values” — for which read Western values — rather than following the Party endorsed pursuit Chinese values.

TV dramas last year were instructed to ‘enhance people’s cultural taste’ and ‘strengthen spiritual civilisation’ — strictures that came with a new set of rules governing the programmes’ content.

Reviving Chinese culture is a core strand of President Xi Jinping’s vision of ‘’the Chinese dream’, as is a very particular view of how China will project itself abroad through Chinese values.

The arts have long been seen as a part of the Party’s ideological leadership, with artists, in all realms of the arts, expected to create works that are not only artistic but also politically inspiring. Those are to serve to promote socialist values in line with the Party’s agenda.

Artistic dissent can have no place in that, much as dissent is being cracked down on in a variety of areas from the social sciences to civil society.

The Beijing Trade Association for Performances, which in 2014 took a leading role in the authorities’ crackdown on performing artists alleged to be involved with drug-taking and prostitution, now says it will ‘purify’ the city’s entertainment and performance sector and guide artists towards ‘core socialist values’.

The entertainment industry poses a particular problem in that fandom around TV, movie and music stars creates a potential point of political power that is youth-based, unpredictable and weakly subject to Party control, all characteristics for which the Party does not care.