Beijing high schooler Chen Zhichu used to spend 30 minutes a day boosting actor Sean Xiao (肖戰) online as one of a legion of superfans, before the practice fell foul of the government for promoting “unhealthy values.”
State regulations last month banned “irrational star-chasing” — online celebrity rankings, fundraising and other tools used by China’s fandoms to get their idols trending on social media — in the latest of a series of crackdowns across Chinese society. Known for his androgynous good looks, Xiao earned legions of devoted, mostly female fans through his role in the 2019 fantasy drama The Untamed, and has over 29 million followers on Weibo alone.
“I used to upvote posts in his Weibo fan forum and buy products he promoted,” Chen, 16, said in a busy downtown shopping district. “It was pretty exhausting trying to keep him trending at number one every day.”
Photo: AFP
Fans power China’s lucrative idol economy, previously forecast by state media to be worth 140 billion yuan (US$21.6 billion) by next year.
In a country where young people have few other means of influencing public life, full-time fan content creators — dubbed zhanjie (站姐) or “station sisters” — can propel a star’s rise from obscurity by creating viral images of them. Critics say fan culture is an exploitative industry aimed at profiting from minors, built on artificially inflated social media engagement — something the government wants to eliminate through the new regulations.
Authorities say the new rules are needed to curb excessive aspects of fan culture, including cyberbullying, stalking, doxxing and bitter online wars between fandoms.
Photo: AFP
But many fans say they derive pleasure from seeing their idols flourish and have found a sense of community from the shared online space.
MORALITY CRACKDOWN
Communist authorities are also worried about idols for another reason: their ability to mobilize fan armies at a moment’s notice, often dominating social media for days.
Photo: AFP
“It’s the beginnings of a mass movement and that is what the government doesn’t want,” said a social studies professor at a Chinese university who did not wish to be named.
Multiple crackdowns have swept the tech, education and showbiz sectors in recent months, as authorities increasingly target the rich and powerful in a push for greater socioeconomic equality.
But it is also partly to instil “healthy,” government-sanctioned societal values in young people, so they are less influenced by wayward celebrities.
“Chinese youth lack other types of idols,” said Fang Kecheng, communications professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “It’s very hard for them to have other means of civic participation [such as activism].”
China’s broadcast regulator last month banned performers with “lapsed morals” and “incorrect political views,” as well as what it termed “sissy men” — an androgynous aesthetic popularized by Korean boybands, and imitated by male Chinese idols like Xiao. Experts read the latter as a sign of Beijing’s increasing discomfort with alternative forms of masculinity at a time of falling birth rates and rising nationalism, as films with macho, military heroes are promoted by the state.
‘NECESSARY GROWTH STAGE’
For one idol-in-waiting in Shanghai, the crackdown on celebrity culture is a chance for an industry reset. Regulation “is a growth stage that the industry needs to go through” 26-year-old Li Chengxi (李丞汐) said during rehearsals for a reality dance competition filming in Nantong, east China.
Li has been an avid dancer and actress since childhood. After graduating from the elite Peking University, she tried to make it as an entertainer, starring in a few films and idol talent shows — a genre now banned by broadcast regulators. Still, she remains unfazed by the potential for state rules to cramp her progress.
“When huge waves break ashore, the gold left behind will shine even brighter,” she said.
Chinese entertainers wanting mainstream success have little choice but to agree with the state, whose disapproval can ultimately sink their careers.
While Li has over 200,000 followers on social media, it’s far from viral superstardom. And for now, Chinese superfans are keeping a low profile both on and offline.
“After this round of clean-ups, there will still be fan activities, but maybe fewer than before,” said one Beijing-based fan in her twenties surnamed Geng.
“Everyone’s watching and waiting.”
The primaries for this year’s nine-in-one local elections in November began early in this election cycle, starting last autumn. The local press has been full of tales of intrigue, betrayal, infighting and drama going back to the summer of 2024. This is not widely covered in the English-language press, and the nine-in-one elections are not well understood. The nine-in-one elections refer to the nine levels of local governments that go to the ballot, from the neighborhood and village borough chief level on up to the city mayor and county commissioner level. The main focus is on the 22 special municipality
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) invaded Vietnam in 1979, following a year of increasingly tense relations between the two states. Beijing viewed Vietnam’s close relations with Soviet Russia as a threat. One of the pretexts it used was the alleged mistreatment of the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam. Tension between the ethnic Chinese and governments in Vietnam had been ongoing for decades. The French used to play off the Vietnamese against the Chinese as a divide-and-rule strategy. The Saigon government in 1956 compelled all Vietnam-born Chinese to adopt Vietnamese citizenship. It also banned them from 11 trades they had previously
In the 2010s, the Communist Party of China (CCP) began cracking down on Christian churches. Media reports said at the time that various versions of Protestant Christianity were likely the fastest growing religions in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The crackdown was part of a campaign that in turn was part of a larger movement to bring religion under party control. For the Protestant churches, “the government’s aim has been to force all churches into the state-controlled organization,” according to a 2023 article in Christianity Today. That piece was centered on Wang Yi (王怡), the fiery, charismatic pastor of the
Hsu Pu-liao (許不了) never lived to see the premiere of his most successful film, The Clown and the Swan (小丑與天鵝, 1985). The movie, which starred Hsu, the “Taiwanese Charlie Chaplin,” outgrossed Jackie Chan’s Heart of Dragon (龍的心), earning NT$9.2 million at the local box office. Forty years after its premiere, the film has become the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute’s (TFAI) 100th restoration. “It is the only one of Hsu’s films whose original negative survived,” says director Kevin Chu (朱延平), one of Taiwan’s most commercially successful
RSS