Fans fear for Fan Bingbing
China’s highest-paid actress has not been seen for two months, it emerged last week – so are the government’s dark tax evasion force to blame? Melissa Twigg investigates...
She is China’s most feted celebrity – a model, actress and singer adored by millions, who has out-earned Hollywood superstars like Julia Roberts and Charlize Theron. But in a scandal worthy of one of her film scripts, news emerged last week that Fan Bingbing has vanished.
Following new measures to crack down on ‘money worship’, the Chinese government has been implicated in the actress’s now two-month-long disappearance because her earnings are said to be one of the highest in the industry. Having starred in home-grown blockbusters as well as Western X, franchisesf-ipsesrfseuccth Mane’ns as oval face – said to be the most requested in Chinese cosmetic surgery clinics – lights up the streets of Shanghai and Beijing on billboards for Cartier and Louis Vuitton.
Fan was last seen in July and last active on Chinese social media site Weibo – where she has more than 62m followers – in early July. Since then, despite repeated calls from fans to release a statement verifying her safety, she has vanished from public life.
The scandal began earlier in the summer, when Fan’s name was first linked to a government push to uncover celebrities using ‘yin-yang’ contracts – a practice involving two contracts, one with an actor’s real earnings and another showing a lower figure, which is filed to the tax authorities. This is done to dodge China’s now draconian approach to high-earning celebrities.
In a campaign by leaders – many of whom still adhere to communist values – to rein in the flagrant spending of the film industry, the government announced a wage cap, insisting lead actors receive no more than 70% of total wages for the cast. Fan, whose earnings easily outstrip nearly every other star in China, allegedly flouted these rules – although her studio denied any wrongdoing and dismissed claims against her as ‘slander’.
‘This seems to be an extension of the anti-corruption efforts that have been going on for years,’ says Elizabeth Flora, the Asia editor for business intelligence firm L2. ‘They are basically aimed at addressing the frustration people feel about the country’s massive wealth inequality.’
Last Tuesday, a state-affiliated think tank released its annual Social Responsibility Report, ranking celebrities according to their socialist values and charity work. Fan was given 0 out of 100, and the report highlighted her ‘negative social impact’. It was favourably covered in the state media, while international censorship trackers say social media posts and online reports about Fan’s disappearance have been deleted within hours of being published.
Commentators are now speculating that the Fan scandal is the Communist Party’s way of sending a message to the rapidly growing Chinese film industry. ‘At first, China wanted to compete with the US in terms of “soft power”,’ says a media source in Hong Kong – referring to the huge influence countries with powerful film, fashion and art industries wield over global culture. ‘But now they’ve woken the movie industry dragon, they’re frantically trying to tame it.’
So what about Fan? Most likely, she is under house arrest somewhere in China and will face an acting ban until she apologises for allegedly flouting the tax rules. ‘Although none of this is really about tax,’ adds our source. ‘It’s about the government showing the entertainment industry who is boss.’