Fraud theory of missing movie star
Fan Bingbing turns 37 today, but the Chinese superstar has little to celebrate after a two-decade career that seems to have ended in a dramatic fall from grace and disappearance that is mystifying her fans.
She is China’s most famous actress, a star of the X-Men and Iron Men franchises and a redcarpet regular sporting outfits by Valentino and jewellery from Chopard.
But Fan has vanished without trace: she has not been seen in public for more than 100 days, reportedly a victim of a Communist Party purge on high- flying tax-dodgers.
It is as if, observers note, Scarlett Johansson vanished overnight.
Or indeed Penelope Cruz, Jessica Chastain, Marion Cotillard or Lupita Nyong’o, with whom Fan appeared in Cannes in May to promote a new spy film.
Fan was last sighted in early June and has not posted to her 63m followers on social media since July.
In her absence, she was just ranked in last place, with a 0 per cent rating, in an annual ‘‘social responsibility report’’ of celebrities by the influential Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and a leading Beijing university.
The report, which scathingly cited her ‘‘negative social impact’’, was widely reported in Chinese media, further proof that she has fallen spectacularly foul of the regime.
The leading, but unconfirmed, theory is that she is the target of an investigation of tax evasion in the entertainment industry over the use of so-called yin-yang contracts – with one document listing a lower fee for declaration to the tax authorities and another recording the genuine, significantly higher figure.
This month a Chinese state newspaper, Securities Daily, reported that the investigation was the reason for her disappearance, saying that Fan had been brought ‘‘under control and about to receive legal judgment’’. But the story was quickly deleted from its website, only adding to the mystery.
Speculation about her whereabouts is rampant. There are rumours that she is under house arrest or has been detained and charged in secret. A Hong Kong tabloid reported that she had fled to America and was seeking asylum there with an immigration lawyer.
There was another clue in a notice of censure issued by the party’s propaganda department shortly before her disappearance. Without naming names, it condemned the film industry for ‘‘distorting social values’’, ‘‘fostering money -worship tendencies’’ and encouraging the young to ‘‘chase celebrities blindly’’.
The authorities have also announced new limits on the salaries of actors, signalling that a broader crackdown on the business is under way. But as the use of yin-yang contracts is widespread in the Chinese entertainment industry, it is not clear why Fan would be made a poster girl for a crackdown.
‘‘Did she offend the wrong person, or is she a very useful example for a broader campaign to rein in the entertainment industry and bring it more into line with the ’core socialist values’ that Chinese president Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party are aggressively promoting?’’ asked Bill Bishop, a respected American analyst on Chinese current affairs.
Her downfall appears to be another signal that in Xi’s China nobody is too powerful to escape the clutches of a sweeping anticorruption crackdown.
Senior politicians and wellconnected tycoons have all fallen from favour.