Global brands including luxury fashion house Prada and healthcare company Haleon have cut ties with star Chinese actor and singer Li Yifeng (李易峰), who was detained on prostitution charges as the government continues a crackdown on the entertainment industry.
Li, 35, also known as Evan Li, was arrested by Beijing police on charges of “soliciting prostitution on multiple occasions,” and reportedly confessed to the allegation, a Sina Weibo post by the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau and a report by state-run China Central Television showed.
His detention was followed by a series of international and Chinese companies announcing they have terminated all business relations with the actor, including Prada, where he was a brand ambassador.
Photo: Screen grab from Li YiFeng Weibo
Sensodyne, a toothpaste unit of UK-based Haleon, and Zhenguoli, a beverage brand of dairy giant China Mengniu Dairy, also severed ties with Li.
Chinese authorities often tout confessions by the accused in high-profile cases, which the US, the UK and other human rights advocates have long cited as evidence of coercion or torture.
Some of those cases have involved vice crimes like prostitution, such as American venture capitalist and Sina Weibo opinion-maker Charles Xue (薛蠻子), who disappeared in 2013 and was released after state television ran a taped statement in which he admitted to hiring prostitutes.
China has ordered sweeping actions to clean up the entertainment industry, with the broadcast regulator moving to ban film stars with “incorrect” politics, cap salaries and rein in celebrity fan culture.
Star pianist Li Yundi (李雲迪) was arrested for soliciting a prostitute in October last year as part of the wider crackdown on the sector. He has not been seen in public since.
Li Yifeng was previously recognized by the authorities as he played the role of Mao Zedong (毛澤東) in The Pioneer, a patriotic movie released last year to celebrate the Chinese Communist Party’s 100th anniversary.
He has also appeared in multiple promotion videos for government agencies, including the Ministry of State Security and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate.
With more than 60 million followers on the microblogging platform Sina Weibo, Li Yifeng was involved in the boycott of Hugo Boss over its pledge not to use cotton produced in Xinjiang over concerns it is made with forced labor by Uighurs.
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
RELATIONS: Cultural spats, such as China’s claims over the origins of kimchi, have soured public opinion in South Korea against Beijing over the past few years Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday met South Korean counterpart Lee Jae-myung, after taking center stage at an Asian summit in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s departure. The talks on the sidelines of the APEC gathering came the final day of Xi’s first trip to South Korea in more than a decade, and a day after his meeting with the Canadian prime minister that was a reset of the nations’ damaged ties. Trump had flown to South Korea for the summit, but promptly jetted home on Thursday after sealing a trade war pause with Xi, with the two
RSS