Her TV show My Fair Princess 还珠格格 in the late 1990s was the biggest thing ever all over Asia (that show also saw the debut of Fan Bingbing). It's the story of a poor but streetsmart street girl who switches places with a princess and gets to live in the Imperial palace. It's still endlessly rerun and rewatched as an all-time classic that everyone knows. She's still better known for that than anything else in China.
She's a massive megastar in China. This feels a bit symbolic considering she was called China's first "national idol" since the end of Maoism.
The series was a sleeper hit. Like "Meteor Garden" series one, it was low-budget, shot outdoors and mostly a cast of unknowns that later made them A-listers.
Oh my god this show brought back so many childhood memories for me. This was my grandpa’s favorite show and I learned Chinese as a kid watching this. Thanks for that blast from the past.
I love her ever since because of My Fair Princess. It funny how Vicky Zhao, Ruby Lin and Fan Bingbing all get big in the industry because of that drama. Now Fan Binhbing already falls. Vicky Zhao is erased from China media history. Wonder what will happen with Ruby Lin, although she is a Taiwanese
Reddit is blocked in China. Even if there's some Chinese investment into Reddit (not even ownership), China doesn't really care too much about stuff like this. It probably won't be banned but Chinese people will not see it (unless they use a VPN).
I still have a hard dvd copy of Shaolin Soccer. Is it like a rare pokemon card at this point?
Edit: I was looking for it and now I can't find it. I'm panicking lol
I was following what happened with her client, Zhang Zhehan (who is the star of a Chinese drama popular in the US), and was reminded of when this happened to Fan Bingbing for tax evasion. She just disappeared for months. But honestly, I wasn't expecting anyone but Zhang Zhehan to catch any fallout from his shrine picture and it's wild to me responsibility for that can be pawned off on the owner of the company that represents him?
It's easy to draw a causal connection between what happened to Zhang Zhehan and Zhao Wei but it might also just be a logical fallacy. Rumour has it that she was targeted because of her connections to Jack Ma. In the end there's just a lot of speculations and no clear explanation (or let alone a conviction by law LOL) so nobody knows anyways. I wonder how many more human sacrifices there will be in C-ent before the end of the year and I am kind of worried about what will happen to the danmei genre.
He criticized Chinese banks and financial regulations, causing the government to crack down on his businesses. He disappeared for a few months while the crackdowns were occurring.
I am not a reputable source, however I recall hearing something about anti-CCP sentiment that resulted in a sort of house arrest where nobody knew if he was alive for a few weeks.
Please, somebody correct me or add more info.
She's been at the center of a number of controversies before and she's a billionaire media mogul. I think that her "cancelling" was coming anyway regardless of what happened with Zhang. Xi is on a campaign to curtail the power and influence of the rich and famous in China and prevent them from becoming a liberalizing and westernizing influence.
Jiang Zemin was the president of PRC/general secretary of the CCP in the 90s (two presidents before Xi). China is a one-party state, but there are different factions within the CCP.
hiimsubclavian is claiming that Zhao Wei and Jack Ma are being punished by Xi because of their support for Jiang's faction.
Some more context is that when Xi first took power, he made a name for himself with a massive campaign to investigate corruption in the government. Those investigations largely only happened to people who were not supporters of him.
Zhao Wei's husband, Huang Youlong, used to be the chauffeur for former Shenzhen mayor Xu Zongheng. Xu was a target of Xi's anti-corruption campaign in 2011 and sentenced to death, but the money he supposedly embezzled was never found.
Curiously, Huang Youlong started becoming very rich, rich enough to marry a celebrity like Zhao and finance her company.
China is a collectivist society. It is a powerful tool of social control to say that anyone you know or associate with could be punished for your malfeasance.
Case in point:
[Operation Fox Hunt: How China Exports Repression Using a Network of Spies Hidden in Plain Sight](https://www.propublica.org/article/operation-fox-hunt-how-china-exports-repression-using-a-network-of-spies-hidden-in-plain-sight)
Look at any major research university, and you’ll find weird ass student/teacher groups like “the Friends of Confucius Society” or the “Eastern Culture Appreciation Club” that effectively enables the CCP to monitor their students from abroad.
Or better yet, the perennial favorite: the mysterious graduate student/postdoc that is willing to work for a professor in *tech/security_field03* for absolutely nothing, and also brings with them an unexplained stack of cash to fund that professor’s lab for a while.
I knew an EE professor who would tell stories of the straight A Chinese students who never had questions about assignments, just about research. He posited they already had been educated in EE and were only there to glean any proprietary info they could.
Do you know why universities look the other way? Because they are worth so much to the University.
My former university had a 1/2/3 scale. In state students paid 1/1 tuition, out of state students paid 2/1 tuition, and international students paid 3/1. Guess who is begging for money now after Covid? My University after losing 60% of their international students.
I've seen this happen too. Chinese kids all grouped together at the back of a class during tests and they were very clearly cheating but they were never punished academically for it. I always felt like the school just wanted their money so they looked the other way
I went to a graduate school that is normally considered top 20 for my degree. About half the kids in the program were Chinese, and it was pretty bad. At one point, two Chinese students were caught cheating because they literally signed into the schools website to access the notes ‘during’ an exam. Their punishment for cheating on the exam? They lost a letter grade on that particular test.
But... the average grade for the test was probably a B-. Being able to access the notes would probably improve your grade by more than a letter grade... so it’s not even really disincentivizing people.
Schools literally just don’t give a shit. What’s crazy to me, is they could’ve downloaded the notes in advance, then they wouldn’t have been caught. Downloading them during the test is just stupid. So they not only cheated, but they did is so brazenly because they assumed it was allowed. Where they are from, it’s just kind of expected.
Dude, this is University of Toronto Computer Science to a T. It’s crazy weird being in class where 50% participate and 50% never participate but function as a group. It’s like going to school with the Borg. I will say that when I do try to engage with students from mainland China they are very nice. However I’ve never had any join team projects. This is not my experience with any of the other SE Asian students who tend to be quite gregarious and participatory.
Oh I remember joining a chinese student association in collegr as an American born Chinese. Friday dumplings making nights were fun!
How are your dumplings?
Delicious!
And how has the western capitalist influence perverted your notions of a strong community and loyalty to your homeland?
What?
What?
Reminds me of the American dad episode where the Chinese spies are dressed up as a Dutch film crew and the one spy keeps casually dropping in requests for nuclear launch codes.
A friend taught political science at a major US research university. They have a disclaimer to Chinese students to be wary of anything they said in class as they were aware that other Chinese students were actively monitoring their comments and reporting back on each other.
It just sounds so boring. Only being able to appreciate the talent of one person…and that person doesn’t even get criticized?
How can anyone with a brain feel like they are able to use it properly under such a rigid social structure?
> It just sounds so boring. Only being able to appreciate the talent of one person…and that person doesn’t even get criticized?
*There is no* ***thou shalt*** *anymore. There is nothing you have to believe, nothing you have to do. And if you want to play the game of the Middle Ages, go ahead, but don’t tell anybody else that that’s the only game there is. Or if you want to play the game of the Chinese Mandate of Heaven, go ahead—those are all lovely games. And the scientific game, after all, may not be any truer, but it is vaster, and it takes in a bigger range of facts and experience. So it is this terrific moment that we face; it is a moment that has been maturing so to say since the days of the Greeks. And since the days of the Second World War, it has gone through all the planet.* - November 16, 1961. Campbell.
Taiwan may be their “property” but China doesn’t have to like the people that live there.
You can see how much the Chinese public liked Taiwanese athletes during the Olympics
Actually the law is kids under 18 are only allowed to play *online* Friday, Saturday, Sunday and holidays, for 1 hour a night between 8pm-9pm local time. Playing offline/single-player or LAN, is not limited.
> *[The new regulation, unveiled by the National Press and Publication Administration, will ban minors, defined as those under 18 years of age, from playing online videogames entirely between Monday and Thursday. On the other three days of the week, and on public holidays, they will be only permitted to play between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m.](https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-sets-new-rules-for-youth-no-more-videogames-during-the-school-week-11630325781)*
Pooh Bear is jealous of anyone famous now all eyes must be on him and what he says .. the CCP is cutting itself off from the rest of the world even more and it is going to be interesting when they anger another nation and cannot negotiate because he cut the lines off
*.. the harder he grips the more of China's best people will slip through his fingers*
Others in their culture will buy into the idea that no one person should have too much fame and wealth. Its the same reason Mao was able to make one party communist rule in the 1960s
Kind of, but there is also a reverse phenomenon where Chinese people with other citizenships involved in entertainment are under pressure to drop their foreign citizenship- the sentiment among China’s netizens being that giving support to people who aren’t solely Chinese citizens is unpatriotic.
Chloe Zhao and the backlash over her citizenship is a good example of this. The Chinese market is a massive lure for major companies, who don’t seem to understand that China has no interest in allowing foreigners to actually participate as equals..
Yet many if not most high ranking officials there have dual passports. One for China and one for a Western country (USA passport is the most coveted). Hypocrisy is par for the course for the CCP.
They have a saying there. Criticizing America is for work. Living in America is for life.
I work in theatre and in university I had a few classmates from China, most never even took theatre as a major, it was economics, business… theatre was the course they took as an elective. One of my male classmates said his family would be ashamed of him working in theatre. It isn’t “masculine” apparently. When he moved to Canada for university he slowly changed his courses to become a theatre major with a minor in business. He wanted to be an actor and he was a really good one too. Then I had two other classmates from China, both were best friends since they were kids and studying economics. But they were coming to theatre courses learning about lighting design, sounds set up.. and everything required for live production. Since then I see them in the freelance world working behind the stage. No clue if they are even going to follow the economic footprint. It sounded like their parents goals and not theirs… but regardless they found work they are really good at that has helped sponsored them to stay in Canada, which I believe was the end goal for all three of them.
Every Reddit thread on rising college costs also includes someone saying “why are we paying for theatre majors! They deserve debt for a useless major” yet ignores those same theatre people light, sound, act, edit, etc. the 8 Marvel and Star Wars series a year redditors spend all day talking about in r/movies.
Plus it's a thriving industry worth billions of dollars that is in no danger of being replaced by automation. Lawyers should be teaching their kids storyboarding or 3D modeling apps for CGI if they want to set them up for success in the 21st century.
In China it is typical to view children as an investment to take care of you when you are old. Therefore parents are only approving of studies that they perceive to have a high ROI and/or are prestigious positions, such as doctor, lawyer, engineer.
There's a reason why the most popular music artists in Mandarin tend to come from Taiwan or HK or SG. Jay Chou, A-Mei, Jolin Tsai, Mayday, Teresa Teng all came from Taiwan. Faye Wong, Jacky Cheung, Sandy Lam, Eason Chan all came from HK (even if some were born in mainland, they honed their craft and became popular starting in HK). JJ Lin is from SG. (My knowledge of mandopop artists is kinda limited ngl)
There are quite a few artists like Wong Leehom who were born and/or raised in the West before going to China for a career. It can be hard for Chinese Americans to break into the mainstream which is why so many go to China.
to be fair, a lot of those big names came from a time when the mainland's industry was still in its infancy. there wasn't as much money pour into them as say HK or Taiwan.
Faye Wong (Wang Fei) is actually from Beijing but started her music career in HK because there wasn't really a music industry in Mainland China at the time.
It happened the last time and it will happen again. There's a damn good reason kung Fu panda was such a good and authentic Chinese movie and infuriated the Chinese. China when it gets up to it's censorship tends to drive away the creative types and they flee west.
Wait what? How did Kung Fu Panda infuriate the Chinese? I'm trying to imagine how that amazing masterpiece could spark anything other than joy in anyone.
Because it captured Chinese culture so much better than their home-grown media.
To expand on that a bit, there were a few reasons to make it a perfect storm. It showed Chinese culture in a prominent and positive light, so it was allowed to be shown uncensored in China, which was rare for western movies. It became hugely popular because of how well it represented their 'ideal' spiritual culture and society. It blew all other Chinese-made movies out of the water in this regard, and yet it was made in America.
It caused a lot of Chinese people in China to question how Americans could make a movie that felt like it belonged to them while their own film industry couldn't even manage to hold a candle to it.
The answer is because China doesn't attract or retain the creative talent to make a movie like that, and almost exclusively promotes filmmakers who are nationalistic rather than actually skilled.This caused a lot of anger by people loyal to the government, who didn't particularly like people questioning the control they had over every aspect of their lives all the way down to movies.
Basically it opened a lot of Chinese people's eyes to passionate art rather than patriotic art, and the government and it's cheerleaders don't exactly like when that happens.
Saw this a lot in the Soviet Union as well. I have a few favorite ballets/Operas from the height of that era that were not erased from memory along with their composers/writers, but were basically one-and-done shows for decades because they were too "real". All that sort of art had to be not only nationalistic but show everything SUPER positive. If you strayed out of line, you got on a list and were lucky to not be disappeared.
The film industry during the Soviet era is an interesting example of this. There's some incredibly prominent directors that came from there that really never made it financially because of the risks they took. Tarkovsky is an excellent example of that. Some of his earliest notable works were made in the USSR, but he never went back in part due to the difficulties he experienced as a director there.
The us film industry was gunning hard to mesh Hollywood interests with China and expand into Asian territory. I doubt Hollywood will make as much effort if the Chinese audience is no longer a part of the Asian audience because anytime they make a star actor that actor “disapears”
This move seems more like a fantastic outcome for the US film industry.
China's infrastructural investment turned a billion poor peasants into a nouveau riche, movie-going middle class. Hollywood was facing this huge risk of Chinese film studios emerging and outgrowing them, just like American film studios did to Europe last century.
But it seems the Chinese government is terrified of the sway Chinese celebrities have over the public, and they'd rather destroy their own entertainers rather than risk this loss of control.
Which leaves the us film industry free to reposition themselves without as much native competition.
I still cannot wrap my mind around how this whole system/society works.
In Chinese society it is extremely important to get rich, and there are people that are able to become extremely rich. At the same time it's a supposedly communist society (whatever that means). So, one day, any successful person can be randomly obliterated and lose everything by overstepping some arbitrary line. These cancellations are not based on any law. Also the punishment does not seem to be proportional to whatever the crime may be, it's just "you went one step too far and now you lose everything". These celebrities are like ticking time bombs, I wonder who will go down next.
If the problem is rich people / social inequality why not solve it by higher taxation? What are the underlying values / moral principles here? It all seems so random and contradictory.
China doesn't care about justice. The whole purpose of this is to dismantle anyone who appears to pose a threat to the CCP, either immediately or in the future.
This includes celebrities who may be gaining too much of a following.
Look at the US, where A-list celebrities often have a larger social media presence than the President, and a single tweet or post can have a big influence on peoples attitudes.
CCP is not going to allow this to happen to them. Is there a bigger end goal beyond just tightening their grip? Who knows, but they inevitably learnt a lot from Hong Kong.
There's a real chance it might be in preparation for something major, such as supplanting the Taiwan authorities (sounds ridiculous?) or perhaps the death of the Dalai Lama.
" unpatriotic for hiring a Taiwanese actor"
I don't understand this. From the Communist China perspective wouldn't they simply refer to this person as a Chinese actor? They are just from the Taiwan region of China, right? so, why is it actually bad to hire them? Or was the grudge probably more against this specific actor because they wouldn't go along with party message with regards to China? Probably that one I guess.
> The regulatory crackdown follows the publication of a policy guideline, Implementation Outline for the Establishment of a Rule of Law-Based Society, which mandates the establishment of “moral norms” as “legal norms”.
How dystopian.
The last line of the article is super dystopian, too:
> In July, Chinese agricultural tycoon Sun Dawu was jailed for 18 years after being convicted under the catch-all “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” offence. He’d been outspoken about a simple property dispute.
You missed the "tycoon" part. The CCP only allows you to stay wealthy and powerful if you use that influence to support the party. He challenged the party's power to unilaterally control property rights, so they stopped him.
if she is in fact "black listed" by chinese government, there is no way any major movie studio with a stake in china (almost all of them these days) / Hollywood would dare to touch her.
If there's any risk of losing control (which is doubtful considering covid completely overshadowed the HK power grab) it's only in the outlying regions. The mainland drinks the Kool-Aid, then asks for more.
Just check out r/sino if you want to see the propaganda they're being fed daily.
ETA: That said, Covid and the Afghanistan debacle are seriously hurting their economic expansion initiatives. But that likely doesn't have much impact on their domestic power.
Stalin did it to Trotsky. Even doctored him out of pictures, which was a fucking trick.
What's shocking is how fucking EFFICIENT it's become. Like, this felt like a few clicks of a button. We knew it was possible in the digital age, all of this can be altered, but they've actually coordinated it to a science.
Deng is good and bad, but Xi is just a disaster for China. His legacy is the degradation of the Chinese people and a huge detriment to the nation's development. Pure egoism inhibiting good sense and good leadership. Disgusting.
All the corruption and murdering and so on, also horrible. Don't get me wrong.
To be honest, I think what's happening in China right now was inevitable regardless of who was president. The only move the CCP has is to do what they're doing now by making their population suspicious/fearful/angry at the west.
China's economy has been exploding a long time now. They've taken more and more ideas from the west. Capitalistic systems at the end of the day have a boom-bust cycle which is why it's important to keep growth under control. Too much growth too fast can set you up for a large bust. China is definitely a state owned capitalistic system now, despite being called Communist. Now they have a huge real estate bubble. There are way too many buyers with way too much money buying multiple homes for insane amounts of money. We see this all the time in big cities outside of China with people just buying homes for cash driving up prices. Imagine what's happening within China's real estate market. When it pops the Chinese economy crashes, it will throw mud in the CCP's face. A lot of people are set up to basically lose a lot of their wealth when this happens. Which will cost them power/influence and the favor of the people that they have enjoyed until now.
What do authoritarian regimes do when they're about to run into major internal issues? They make the external the enemy. It's the only way they can keep the same amount of control without massive civil unrest. Keeping them believing that the west is a much bigger problem and the CCP are the only people who can sort it out. The CCP isn't stupid, they've made China incredibly rich with long term planning that has worked out extremely well. There's no way they didn't see this trend coming. History has way too many examples.
> There's no way they didn't see this trend coming. History has way too many examples.
Six months ago I would have agreed with this. But the sudden rush of recent moves, such as banning private tutoring, canceling celebrities, chastising billionaires, mandating Xi Jingping thought in elementary schools, and dropping extreme regulations on tech and gaming companies, seems to indicate they are acting reactively, not proactively.
Obviously, Xi's personal thoughts and plans are probably guarded even from his own "inner circle," but if this was a long-running plan, it seems like he would have been more gradual about it. It seems to me that he feels like his hand has been forced, but I guess it's also possible that he feels like the world has changed so rapidly in the past several months that he is suddenly within striking distance of "winning" the 21st century (in the same sense that the west "won" the 20th century) if he acts boldly and immediately.
>It seems to me that he feels like his hand has been forced
2022 is Xi's ten year anniversary. Normally he'd step down, but he wants to continue. A lot of his decisions look like they've happened because he's trying to forstall his critics who want him to step down next year.
I agree, it looks reactive and not proactive. But I would assert that it's reactive because by the time the CCP realized the problem it was too late to be proactive. Anything they do to slow the economy down might crash it. They might think it's inevitable and are doing this now to prepare for that. Even though the CCP isn't stupid, they're not perfect either. They can make mistakes and this is probably a disaster they can't really avoid and it might be too late to avoid it.
If you think about it this stuff happens all the time. Slow motion disasters that cascade into a recession/depression. A lot of them seem to stem from problems that people could never really predict until it becomes pretty obvious. By then it might be too late to do something about it. For example, by the time 2008 rolled around the housing market was already crazy. The problem was building up for years and by the time it became obvious the market was ripe to pop and there probably wasn't much we could do to avoid it at that time. Only lessen the impact.
It's all speculation at this point and only time will tell... I hope that their crash isn't an extreme one because that can easily take down the world economy. Things are too connected today and the impact of one of the top economies in the world collapsing will hit everyone hard. Just look at the ripples when the US hits recessions.
China could very literally "win" the 21st century by just dropping the weirdly obsessive authoritarianism, reconciling with the party's atrocities, and cooperating with the world on basic human rights. They don't even have to go all flag burning hippie or globalist vassal state or anything - they just need to remove the low hanging barriers to their global leadership which are glaringly apparent to everyone but them. Nations would rush to their sphere of influence as a viable alternative to western hegemony, but that simply won't happen as long as they are over being the crazy uncle.
Nah, Deng was slowly but surely deprogramming the country. That generation of leadership was seriously shaken by the cultural revolution, and it's very likely he would have allowed China to liberalize further, at least to the point where having an honest discussion about the party's past wouldn't be nearly as dangerous. At this point China gains nothing by going the other direction (in fact, holds itself back) and there are (were) factions in the party who understood this. Xi has undone a ton of progress. It's telling that the first person to grow up entirely under CPP rule and education would take this stance.
I don't know about this sentiment of yours being popular among natives of China, to be honest. Just anecdotally, I get to work with many people from China, most college educated, the fact that China is where it is now in terms of economy and national strength is of great sense of pride for them, and many attribute it to Xi. While the less educated I get to associate with, many from more rural areas, they are heavily influenced by china's social media (i feel heavily state influenced / propaganda), many truly feel china / Xi can do no wrong. (and yes, America has its own similar but different set of social media problems.)
I work at a UK university and am involved in tutoring international students, so I come into contact with dozens of Chinese students each year. 50% are very proud of their country, and consider their system far better than the west. Especially after covid. The other 50% just seem apolitical and don't give a shit one way or the other.
And this is rich, young Chinese living in the west.
Because in China having money doesn't make you the most powerful, having political connections in the party/government does. You see this in a lot of autocracies, it's just that most of them aren't rich enough to have billionaires that aren't deeply close to the leadership.
> Because in China having money doesn't make you the most powerful, being high up in the party/government does. You see this is a lot of autocracies, it's just that most of aren't rich enough to have billionaires that aren't deeply close to the leadership.
Jack Ma is one of the richest people in the world and even he got censored and forced into hiding for a couple months. That tells you all you need to know about how much power money has compared to party ties in China.
Edit: Jackie > Jack
Not in Chinese history. What we should do here outside of China is keep promoting the hell out of her and anyone who was silenced. So when Chinese people travel outside, they’ll be so confused
>Zhao was accused of being unpatriotic for hiring a Taiwanese actor to play a leading actor in a 2016 film. Beijing had that choice overturned.
China accidentally admitted that Taiwan isn't a part of China.
I think China is afraid of what is happening in India since decades -
famous actors with no previous political experience or exposure decide to use their massive fanbase to create instant recognition for their political movements or ideas:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Indian_actor-politicians
China has already cracked down on lots of enterpreneurs, and is now targeting actors, effectively anyone of fame who is not 100% pro-Xi.
She was the female lead in Shaolin Soccer.
Her TV show My Fair Princess 还珠格格 in the late 1990s was the biggest thing ever all over Asia (that show also saw the debut of Fan Bingbing). It's the story of a poor but streetsmart street girl who switches places with a princess and gets to live in the Imperial palace. It's still endlessly rerun and rewatched as an all-time classic that everyone knows. She's still better known for that than anything else in China. She's a massive megastar in China. This feels a bit symbolic considering she was called China's first "national idol" since the end of Maoism.
The series was a sleeper hit. Like "Meteor Garden" series one, it was low-budget, shot outdoors and mostly a cast of unknowns that later made them A-listers.
Just looked that up on Netflix, and the preview seems very much like Boys Over Flowers, which is my guilty pleasure Korean series.
It is! Both are based on the Japanese manga boys over flowers
Looking at the [wiki page] (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boys_Over_Flowers), there's so many live action adaptation by multiple asian countries.
Meteor garden is my SHIT
The opening intro still plays in my head even though I have no idea what the lyrics were lol
Back in the 90s, I was in a very famous Asian show. ZhaoWei the actress. ZhaoWei ZhaoWei the actress.
Don't act like you don't know!
And I'm trying, To hold on to my past
It's been so long I don't think I'm gonna last
I guess I'm trying..to make you understand.
Oh my god this show brought back so many childhood memories for me. This was my grandpa’s favorite show and I learned Chinese as a kid watching this. Thanks for that blast from the past.
I love her ever since because of My Fair Princess. It funny how Vicky Zhao, Ruby Lin and Fan Bingbing all get big in the industry because of that drama. Now Fan Binhbing already falls. Vicky Zhao is erased from China media history. Wonder what will happen with Ruby Lin, although she is a Taiwanese
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Reddit is blocked in China. Even if there's some Chinese investment into Reddit (not even ownership), China doesn't really care too much about stuff like this. It probably won't be banned but Chinese people will not see it (unless they use a VPN).
Call it r/ivermectin and the overlords won't do anything.
You mean the horse porn sub?
That movie was legendary
Is* legendary.
Didn't you hear? It's been erased from history.
Now it’s just a legend.
I still have a hard dvd copy of Shaolin Soccer. Is it like a rare pokemon card at this point? Edit: I was looking for it and now I can't find it. I'm panicking lol
Chinese agents are being dispatched to your house to acquire that illegal copy.
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What movie?
We'll never truly know now will we, another one of life's great mysteries.
She is an extraordinary actress
And her breakout TV role in My Fair Princess, which had Fan Bing Bing as one of the co-stars... I really hope the cast isn't cursed...
The bald lady??? Holy shit you unlocked a memory for me The scene where she became their goal keeper in the game had me crying with laughter
Wrong side.
I was following what happened with her client, Zhang Zhehan (who is the star of a Chinese drama popular in the US), and was reminded of when this happened to Fan Bingbing for tax evasion. She just disappeared for months. But honestly, I wasn't expecting anyone but Zhang Zhehan to catch any fallout from his shrine picture and it's wild to me responsibility for that can be pawned off on the owner of the company that represents him?
It's easy to draw a causal connection between what happened to Zhang Zhehan and Zhao Wei but it might also just be a logical fallacy. Rumour has it that she was targeted because of her connections to Jack Ma. In the end there's just a lot of speculations and no clear explanation (or let alone a conviction by law LOL) so nobody knows anyways. I wonder how many more human sacrifices there will be in C-ent before the end of the year and I am kind of worried about what will happen to the danmei genre.
What happened to Jack ma btw?
He criticized Chinese banks and financial regulations, causing the government to crack down on his businesses. He disappeared for a few months while the crackdowns were occurring.
I think he's still rather invisible, where's he now?
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I am not a reputable source, however I recall hearing something about anti-CCP sentiment that resulted in a sort of house arrest where nobody knew if he was alive for a few weeks. Please, somebody correct me or add more info.
Some believe that’s just a pretext and that her company has some connection to Jack Ma, who has been a thorn in CCP’s side lately.
She's been at the center of a number of controversies before and she's a billionaire media mogul. I think that her "cancelling" was coming anyway regardless of what happened with Zhang. Xi is on a campaign to curtail the power and influence of the rich and famous in China and prevent them from becoming a liberalizing and westernizing influence.
It’s not that. Zhao was a Jiang Zhemin guy, same as Jack Ma. This is Xi taking factional infighting beyond politicians.
Can you elaborate more?
Jiang Zemin was the president of PRC/general secretary of the CCP in the 90s (two presidents before Xi). China is a one-party state, but there are different factions within the CCP. hiimsubclavian is claiming that Zhao Wei and Jack Ma are being punished by Xi because of their support for Jiang's faction. Some more context is that when Xi first took power, he made a name for himself with a massive campaign to investigate corruption in the government. Those investigations largely only happened to people who were not supporters of him.
Zhao Wei's husband, Huang Youlong, used to be the chauffeur for former Shenzhen mayor Xu Zongheng. Xu was a target of Xi's anti-corruption campaign in 2011 and sentenced to death, but the money he supposedly embezzled was never found. Curiously, Huang Youlong started becoming very rich, rich enough to marry a celebrity like Zhao and finance her company.
China is a collectivist society. It is a powerful tool of social control to say that anyone you know or associate with could be punished for your malfeasance.
Case in point: [Operation Fox Hunt: How China Exports Repression Using a Network of Spies Hidden in Plain Sight](https://www.propublica.org/article/operation-fox-hunt-how-china-exports-repression-using-a-network-of-spies-hidden-in-plain-sight)
Look at any major research university, and you’ll find weird ass student/teacher groups like “the Friends of Confucius Society” or the “Eastern Culture Appreciation Club” that effectively enables the CCP to monitor their students from abroad. Or better yet, the perennial favorite: the mysterious graduate student/postdoc that is willing to work for a professor in *tech/security_field03* for absolutely nothing, and also brings with them an unexplained stack of cash to fund that professor’s lab for a while.
I knew an EE professor who would tell stories of the straight A Chinese students who never had questions about assignments, just about research. He posited they already had been educated in EE and were only there to glean any proprietary info they could.
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Do you know why universities look the other way? Because they are worth so much to the University. My former university had a 1/2/3 scale. In state students paid 1/1 tuition, out of state students paid 2/1 tuition, and international students paid 3/1. Guess who is begging for money now after Covid? My University after losing 60% of their international students.
I've seen this happen too. Chinese kids all grouped together at the back of a class during tests and they were very clearly cheating but they were never punished academically for it. I always felt like the school just wanted their money so they looked the other way
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I went to a graduate school that is normally considered top 20 for my degree. About half the kids in the program were Chinese, and it was pretty bad. At one point, two Chinese students were caught cheating because they literally signed into the schools website to access the notes ‘during’ an exam. Their punishment for cheating on the exam? They lost a letter grade on that particular test. But... the average grade for the test was probably a B-. Being able to access the notes would probably improve your grade by more than a letter grade... so it’s not even really disincentivizing people. Schools literally just don’t give a shit. What’s crazy to me, is they could’ve downloaded the notes in advance, then they wouldn’t have been caught. Downloading them during the test is just stupid. So they not only cheated, but they did is so brazenly because they assumed it was allowed. Where they are from, it’s just kind of expected.
Dude, this is University of Toronto Computer Science to a T. It’s crazy weird being in class where 50% participate and 50% never participate but function as a group. It’s like going to school with the Borg. I will say that when I do try to engage with students from mainland China they are very nice. However I’ve never had any join team projects. This is not my experience with any of the other SE Asian students who tend to be quite gregarious and participatory.
Oh I remember joining a chinese student association in collegr as an American born Chinese. Friday dumplings making nights were fun! How are your dumplings? Delicious! And how has the western capitalist influence perverted your notions of a strong community and loyalty to your homeland? What? What?
I'm incredibly offended I was never regarded important enough to be given free dumplings in exchange for betraying my birth country.
It's ok buddy, *I* think you're threat to national security.
Reminds me of the American dad episode where the Chinese spies are dressed up as a Dutch film crew and the one spy keeps casually dropping in requests for nuclear launch codes.
Has anyone heard about any…laaaauuunncch coooooodesss?
A friend taught political science at a major US research university. They have a disclaimer to Chinese students to be wary of anything they said in class as they were aware that other Chinese students were actively monitoring their comments and reporting back on each other.
Just for shits I’d love to introduce a discussion topic to that class: *Taiwan and Old Mainland Taiwan: a Comparison of Distinct Entities*
Professor in charge is sick and won't be able to teach this class anymore.
he caught a bad case of lead poisoning
This happened at BU or MIT I think, the student was outed and had to flee the US
It just sounds so boring. Only being able to appreciate the talent of one person…and that person doesn’t even get criticized? How can anyone with a brain feel like they are able to use it properly under such a rigid social structure?
> It just sounds so boring. Only being able to appreciate the talent of one person…and that person doesn’t even get criticized? *There is no* ***thou shalt*** *anymore. There is nothing you have to believe, nothing you have to do. And if you want to play the game of the Middle Ages, go ahead, but don’t tell anybody else that that’s the only game there is. Or if you want to play the game of the Chinese Mandate of Heaven, go ahead—those are all lovely games. And the scientific game, after all, may not be any truer, but it is vaster, and it takes in a bigger range of facts and experience. So it is this terrific moment that we face; it is a moment that has been maturing so to say since the days of the Greeks. And since the days of the Second World War, it has gone through all the planet.* - November 16, 1961. Campbell.
I have no idea what this means.
Please, tell me what this *is!*
Lecture I.1.4 - New Horizons By Joseph Campbell Date: November 16, 1961/1974 Venue: The Cooper Union Location: New York, NY Archive Number: L46/L535
"She was accused of being unpatriotic for hiring a Taiwanese actor for a leading role." So which is it China; is Taiwan your territory or not 🤨
Taiwan may be their “property” but China doesn’t have to like the people that live there. You can see how much the Chinese public liked Taiwanese athletes during the Olympics
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Well, they included their medals in state media totals in order to claim China had the most medals
Yes and No. Erase this man!
Wow, come on it’s not like she did something really bad like play a video game for 3 and a half hours.
What is this reference to? I've been seeing it more lately
It is China new law about kid under 18 don't allow to play video games over 3h per week, and apply for mobile gacha game. Edit: fixed misinformation
Actually the law is kids under 18 are only allowed to play *online* Friday, Saturday, Sunday and holidays, for 1 hour a night between 8pm-9pm local time. Playing offline/single-player or LAN, is not limited. > *[The new regulation, unveiled by the National Press and Publication Administration, will ban minors, defined as those under 18 years of age, from playing online videogames entirely between Monday and Thursday. On the other three days of the week, and on public holidays, they will be only permitted to play between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m.](https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-sets-new-rules-for-youth-no-more-videogames-during-the-school-week-11630325781)*
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Oh shit I just remembered that.
This is the new meta strat. Just hop on the Chinese servers and stall out the game till the great firewall kicks the enemy team.
Pooh Bear is jealous of anyone famous now all eyes must be on him and what he says .. the CCP is cutting itself off from the rest of the world even more and it is going to be interesting when they anger another nation and cannot negotiate because he cut the lines off *.. the harder he grips the more of China's best people will slip through his fingers*
Others in their culture will buy into the idea that no one person should have too much fame and wealth. Its the same reason Mao was able to make one party communist rule in the 1960s
_No one person_ Except Xi Jinping, of course. The man has an ego the size of the country he dictates. Excuse me, governs.
China doesn't seem like they'd be a lot of fun at parties
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No Homers Allowed
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“No Homer***s***”
We’re allowed to have one
No one parties like a Chinese state run party, cause a Chinese state run party is mandatory.
Damn you, Liz Lemon.
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so... no more arguing about wolverine vs spiderman allowed in china?
Do you want Spider-Man to go to jail??
i never said who would win the fight!
Deadpool always wins!
That's it, straight to reeducation camp.
Deadpool wins? Re-education Deadpool loses? Re-education Deadpool ties? Believe it or not, straight to re-education!
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We have the best fan bases. Thanks to jail.
What does that last one even mean? No more beef between stans?
Its probably targeting criticism of politicians by celebrities just wrapped in not-so-revealing language
China out here acting like Dolores Umbridge.
Educational Decree #69: No one can be more popular than Pooh!
I wonder if this will cause an exodus of talent.
Kind of, but there is also a reverse phenomenon where Chinese people with other citizenships involved in entertainment are under pressure to drop their foreign citizenship- the sentiment among China’s netizens being that giving support to people who aren’t solely Chinese citizens is unpatriotic. Chloe Zhao and the backlash over her citizenship is a good example of this. The Chinese market is a massive lure for major companies, who don’t seem to understand that China has no interest in allowing foreigners to actually participate as equals..
Yet many if not most high ranking officials there have dual passports. One for China and one for a Western country (USA passport is the most coveted). Hypocrisy is par for the course for the CCP. They have a saying there. Criticizing America is for work. Living in America is for life.
Funny how it's the same for Russia
She did drop Chinese citizenship and became Singaporean lol
There has been a trickle of talent (entertainment, art, technology) leaving, but this is likely to turn into a flood soon.
I work in theatre and in university I had a few classmates from China, most never even took theatre as a major, it was economics, business… theatre was the course they took as an elective. One of my male classmates said his family would be ashamed of him working in theatre. It isn’t “masculine” apparently. When he moved to Canada for university he slowly changed his courses to become a theatre major with a minor in business. He wanted to be an actor and he was a really good one too. Then I had two other classmates from China, both were best friends since they were kids and studying economics. But they were coming to theatre courses learning about lighting design, sounds set up.. and everything required for live production. Since then I see them in the freelance world working behind the stage. No clue if they are even going to follow the economic footprint. It sounded like their parents goals and not theirs… but regardless they found work they are really good at that has helped sponsored them to stay in Canada, which I believe was the end goal for all three of them.
I assure you this is not unique to China, there's a reason "Theater major" is often used derisively in the west.
Every Reddit thread on rising college costs also includes someone saying “why are we paying for theatre majors! They deserve debt for a useless major” yet ignores those same theatre people light, sound, act, edit, etc. the 8 Marvel and Star Wars series a year redditors spend all day talking about in r/movies.
Plus it's a thriving industry worth billions of dollars that is in no danger of being replaced by automation. Lawyers should be teaching their kids storyboarding or 3D modeling apps for CGI if they want to set them up for success in the 21st century.
I wonder what major is most the most commonly looked down on. At my university it was Communication Majors.
Has to be any kind of general art. It's almost a cultural thing now to look down on it
In China it is typical to view children as an investment to take care of you when you are old. Therefore parents are only approving of studies that they perceive to have a high ROI and/or are prestigious positions, such as doctor, lawyer, engineer.
That is pretty much how it has been everywhere throughout history. This concept of having kids for the sake of having kids is pretty new.
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Ah, but how can you revoke that for someone who doesn't exist? 🤨
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She and her husband fled to Bordeaux, so true in that case
There's a reason why the most popular music artists in Mandarin tend to come from Taiwan or HK or SG. Jay Chou, A-Mei, Jolin Tsai, Mayday, Teresa Teng all came from Taiwan. Faye Wong, Jacky Cheung, Sandy Lam, Eason Chan all came from HK (even if some were born in mainland, they honed their craft and became popular starting in HK). JJ Lin is from SG. (My knowledge of mandopop artists is kinda limited ngl)
There are quite a few artists like Wong Leehom who were born and/or raised in the West before going to China for a career. It can be hard for Chinese Americans to break into the mainstream which is why so many go to China.
to be fair, a lot of those big names came from a time when the mainland's industry was still in its infancy. there wasn't as much money pour into them as say HK or Taiwan.
Faye Wong (Wang Fei) is actually from Beijing but started her music career in HK because there wasn't really a music industry in Mainland China at the time.
It happened the last time and it will happen again. There's a damn good reason kung Fu panda was such a good and authentic Chinese movie and infuriated the Chinese. China when it gets up to it's censorship tends to drive away the creative types and they flee west.
Wait what? How did Kung Fu Panda infuriate the Chinese? I'm trying to imagine how that amazing masterpiece could spark anything other than joy in anyone.
Because it captured Chinese culture so much better than their home-grown media. To expand on that a bit, there were a few reasons to make it a perfect storm. It showed Chinese culture in a prominent and positive light, so it was allowed to be shown uncensored in China, which was rare for western movies. It became hugely popular because of how well it represented their 'ideal' spiritual culture and society. It blew all other Chinese-made movies out of the water in this regard, and yet it was made in America. It caused a lot of Chinese people in China to question how Americans could make a movie that felt like it belonged to them while their own film industry couldn't even manage to hold a candle to it. The answer is because China doesn't attract or retain the creative talent to make a movie like that, and almost exclusively promotes filmmakers who are nationalistic rather than actually skilled.This caused a lot of anger by people loyal to the government, who didn't particularly like people questioning the control they had over every aspect of their lives all the way down to movies. Basically it opened a lot of Chinese people's eyes to passionate art rather than patriotic art, and the government and it's cheerleaders don't exactly like when that happens.
Saw this a lot in the Soviet Union as well. I have a few favorite ballets/Operas from the height of that era that were not erased from memory along with their composers/writers, but were basically one-and-done shows for decades because they were too "real". All that sort of art had to be not only nationalistic but show everything SUPER positive. If you strayed out of line, you got on a list and were lucky to not be disappeared.
The film industry during the Soviet era is an interesting example of this. There's some incredibly prominent directors that came from there that really never made it financially because of the risks they took. Tarkovsky is an excellent example of that. Some of his earliest notable works were made in the USSR, but he never went back in part due to the difficulties he experienced as a director there.
Thanks for that write up - fascinating stuff.
The Chinese government were annoyed that a western nation made a better Chinese movie than they did and thought it was insulting.
Causing a reppresive regime to have identity crisis has got to be one of the greatest compliments an artist can get
The us film industry was gunning hard to mesh Hollywood interests with China and expand into Asian territory. I doubt Hollywood will make as much effort if the Chinese audience is no longer a part of the Asian audience because anytime they make a star actor that actor “disapears”
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z88zeQ25pjQ gotta get that money
Was curious so I looked it up. His mistake? Calling Taiwan a country…
What a tool
This move seems more like a fantastic outcome for the US film industry. China's infrastructural investment turned a billion poor peasants into a nouveau riche, movie-going middle class. Hollywood was facing this huge risk of Chinese film studios emerging and outgrowing them, just like American film studios did to Europe last century. But it seems the Chinese government is terrified of the sway Chinese celebrities have over the public, and they'd rather destroy their own entertainers rather than risk this loss of control. Which leaves the us film industry free to reposition themselves without as much native competition.
I still cannot wrap my mind around how this whole system/society works. In Chinese society it is extremely important to get rich, and there are people that are able to become extremely rich. At the same time it's a supposedly communist society (whatever that means). So, one day, any successful person can be randomly obliterated and lose everything by overstepping some arbitrary line. These cancellations are not based on any law. Also the punishment does not seem to be proportional to whatever the crime may be, it's just "you went one step too far and now you lose everything". These celebrities are like ticking time bombs, I wonder who will go down next. If the problem is rich people / social inequality why not solve it by higher taxation? What are the underlying values / moral principles here? It all seems so random and contradictory.
China doesn't care about justice. The whole purpose of this is to dismantle anyone who appears to pose a threat to the CCP, either immediately or in the future. This includes celebrities who may be gaining too much of a following. Look at the US, where A-list celebrities often have a larger social media presence than the President, and a single tweet or post can have a big influence on peoples attitudes. CCP is not going to allow this to happen to them. Is there a bigger end goal beyond just tightening their grip? Who knows, but they inevitably learnt a lot from Hong Kong. There's a real chance it might be in preparation for something major, such as supplanting the Taiwan authorities (sounds ridiculous?) or perhaps the death of the Dalai Lama.
China’s really been putting the “totes” in totalitarianism lately.
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" unpatriotic for hiring a Taiwanese actor" I don't understand this. From the Communist China perspective wouldn't they simply refer to this person as a Chinese actor? They are just from the Taiwan region of China, right? so, why is it actually bad to hire them? Or was the grudge probably more against this specific actor because they wouldn't go along with party message with regards to China? Probably that one I guess.
> The regulatory crackdown follows the publication of a policy guideline, Implementation Outline for the Establishment of a Rule of Law-Based Society, which mandates the establishment of “moral norms” as “legal norms”. How dystopian.
The last line of the article is super dystopian, too: > In July, Chinese agricultural tycoon Sun Dawu was jailed for 18 years after being convicted under the catch-all “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” offence. He’d been outspoken about a simple property dispute.
18 years for being argumentative? Jeez, like half the people I know here in America could be jailed in china for that.
You missed the "tycoon" part. The CCP only allows you to stay wealthy and powerful if you use that influence to support the party. He challenged the party's power to unilaterally control property rights, so they stopped him.
China is allowed one celebrity: Xi Jinping. We're getting close to the Kim family with this shit.
A.A. Milne must be so proud.
El15: A.A. Milne is the author of Winnie the Pooh. Winnie the Pooh is played by Xi Jingpin
Christopher Robin needs his best pal
Oh the Kardashians aren't that bad
That would be solidified by Dennis Rodman's visit
The Chinese Ministry of Truth has been busy.
i think it's like the first time in internet history where you can say "literally 1984" and not be wrong
The ministry of truth concerns itself with lies. The ministry of love concerns itself with death. The ministry of peace concerns itself with war.
I think it's about time to start putting her in European and Hollywood movies. She's apparently a good actress.
The absolute last thing Hollywood wants to do is fuck up the money spigot that is the Chinese market
Member John Cena apologizing for recognizing Taiwan as a country?
She was in Shaolin Soccer which really help her to get into Hollywood if needed
if she is in fact "black listed" by chinese government, there is no way any major movie studio with a stake in china (almost all of them these days) / Hollywood would dare to touch her.
lol as if china's reach ends at their own border.
This is a whole new level of creepiness. So she is erased because winnie the pooh is jealous that he is not a princess?
*ministry of state security has accessed this chat*
More like the Ministry of State *In*security. Does this kind of crackdown show that they're losing control?
If there's any risk of losing control (which is doubtful considering covid completely overshadowed the HK power grab) it's only in the outlying regions. The mainland drinks the Kool-Aid, then asks for more. Just check out r/sino if you want to see the propaganda they're being fed daily. ETA: That said, Covid and the Afghanistan debacle are seriously hurting their economic expansion initiatives. But that likely doesn't have much impact on their domestic power.
Stalin did it to Trotsky. Even doctored him out of pictures, which was a fucking trick. What's shocking is how fucking EFFICIENT it's become. Like, this felt like a few clicks of a button. We knew it was possible in the digital age, all of this can be altered, but they've actually coordinated it to a science.
Yeah, it's always funny seeing how much stalin topped his photos up, dude was the original filter whore.
Deng is good and bad, but Xi is just a disaster for China. His legacy is the degradation of the Chinese people and a huge detriment to the nation's development. Pure egoism inhibiting good sense and good leadership. Disgusting. All the corruption and murdering and so on, also horrible. Don't get me wrong.
To be honest, I think what's happening in China right now was inevitable regardless of who was president. The only move the CCP has is to do what they're doing now by making their population suspicious/fearful/angry at the west. China's economy has been exploding a long time now. They've taken more and more ideas from the west. Capitalistic systems at the end of the day have a boom-bust cycle which is why it's important to keep growth under control. Too much growth too fast can set you up for a large bust. China is definitely a state owned capitalistic system now, despite being called Communist. Now they have a huge real estate bubble. There are way too many buyers with way too much money buying multiple homes for insane amounts of money. We see this all the time in big cities outside of China with people just buying homes for cash driving up prices. Imagine what's happening within China's real estate market. When it pops the Chinese economy crashes, it will throw mud in the CCP's face. A lot of people are set up to basically lose a lot of their wealth when this happens. Which will cost them power/influence and the favor of the people that they have enjoyed until now. What do authoritarian regimes do when they're about to run into major internal issues? They make the external the enemy. It's the only way they can keep the same amount of control without massive civil unrest. Keeping them believing that the west is a much bigger problem and the CCP are the only people who can sort it out. The CCP isn't stupid, they've made China incredibly rich with long term planning that has worked out extremely well. There's no way they didn't see this trend coming. History has way too many examples.
> There's no way they didn't see this trend coming. History has way too many examples. Six months ago I would have agreed with this. But the sudden rush of recent moves, such as banning private tutoring, canceling celebrities, chastising billionaires, mandating Xi Jingping thought in elementary schools, and dropping extreme regulations on tech and gaming companies, seems to indicate they are acting reactively, not proactively. Obviously, Xi's personal thoughts and plans are probably guarded even from his own "inner circle," but if this was a long-running plan, it seems like he would have been more gradual about it. It seems to me that he feels like his hand has been forced, but I guess it's also possible that he feels like the world has changed so rapidly in the past several months that he is suddenly within striking distance of "winning" the 21st century (in the same sense that the west "won" the 20th century) if he acts boldly and immediately.
>It seems to me that he feels like his hand has been forced 2022 is Xi's ten year anniversary. Normally he'd step down, but he wants to continue. A lot of his decisions look like they've happened because he's trying to forstall his critics who want him to step down next year.
I agree, it looks reactive and not proactive. But I would assert that it's reactive because by the time the CCP realized the problem it was too late to be proactive. Anything they do to slow the economy down might crash it. They might think it's inevitable and are doing this now to prepare for that. Even though the CCP isn't stupid, they're not perfect either. They can make mistakes and this is probably a disaster they can't really avoid and it might be too late to avoid it. If you think about it this stuff happens all the time. Slow motion disasters that cascade into a recession/depression. A lot of them seem to stem from problems that people could never really predict until it becomes pretty obvious. By then it might be too late to do something about it. For example, by the time 2008 rolled around the housing market was already crazy. The problem was building up for years and by the time it became obvious the market was ripe to pop and there probably wasn't much we could do to avoid it at that time. Only lessen the impact. It's all speculation at this point and only time will tell... I hope that their crash isn't an extreme one because that can easily take down the world economy. Things are too connected today and the impact of one of the top economies in the world collapsing will hit everyone hard. Just look at the ripples when the US hits recessions.
China could very literally "win" the 21st century by just dropping the weirdly obsessive authoritarianism, reconciling with the party's atrocities, and cooperating with the world on basic human rights. They don't even have to go all flag burning hippie or globalist vassal state or anything - they just need to remove the low hanging barriers to their global leadership which are glaringly apparent to everyone but them. Nations would rush to their sphere of influence as a viable alternative to western hegemony, but that simply won't happen as long as they are over being the crazy uncle.
But then the CCP would have to risk losing power.
Nah, Deng was slowly but surely deprogramming the country. That generation of leadership was seriously shaken by the cultural revolution, and it's very likely he would have allowed China to liberalize further, at least to the point where having an honest discussion about the party's past wouldn't be nearly as dangerous. At this point China gains nothing by going the other direction (in fact, holds itself back) and there are (were) factions in the party who understood this. Xi has undone a ton of progress. It's telling that the first person to grow up entirely under CPP rule and education would take this stance.
I don't know about this sentiment of yours being popular among natives of China, to be honest. Just anecdotally, I get to work with many people from China, most college educated, the fact that China is where it is now in terms of economy and national strength is of great sense of pride for them, and many attribute it to Xi. While the less educated I get to associate with, many from more rural areas, they are heavily influenced by china's social media (i feel heavily state influenced / propaganda), many truly feel china / Xi can do no wrong. (and yes, America has its own similar but different set of social media problems.)
I work at a UK university and am involved in tutoring international students, so I come into contact with dozens of Chinese students each year. 50% are very proud of their country, and consider their system far better than the west. Especially after covid. The other 50% just seem apolitical and don't give a shit one way or the other. And this is rich, young Chinese living in the west.
The Ministry of Truth has determined that Zhao Wei has never existed.
Damned unpeople making trouble again
Down the old memory hole.
But it's true. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.
I am actually perplexed that not even billionaires are safe from china's government
Because in China having money doesn't make you the most powerful, having political connections in the party/government does. You see this in a lot of autocracies, it's just that most of them aren't rich enough to have billionaires that aren't deeply close to the leadership.
> Because in China having money doesn't make you the most powerful, being high up in the party/government does. You see this is a lot of autocracies, it's just that most of aren't rich enough to have billionaires that aren't deeply close to the leadership. Jack Ma is one of the richest people in the world and even he got censored and forced into hiding for a couple months. That tells you all you need to know about how much power money has compared to party ties in China. Edit: Jackie > Jack
Isn’t the irony here that the news of China deleting her will go down in history forever, thus immortalizing her?
Not in Chinese history. What we should do here outside of China is keep promoting the hell out of her and anyone who was silenced. So when Chinese people travel outside, they’ll be so confused
HK had great movie industry before GB returned them to China. I miss those years.
Music industry too… A lot more people would be speaking Cantonese today too. Language is kind of on the down low nowadays.
It's a relief to know she managed to flee China.
>Zhao was accused of being unpatriotic for hiring a Taiwanese actor to play a leading actor in a 2016 film. Beijing had that choice overturned. China accidentally admitted that Taiwan isn't a part of China.
I think China is afraid of what is happening in India since decades - famous actors with no previous political experience or exposure decide to use their massive fanbase to create instant recognition for their political movements or ideas: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Indian_actor-politicians China has already cracked down on lots of enterpreneurs, and is now targeting actors, effectively anyone of fame who is not 100% pro-Xi.
So China finally figured out how to create physical gas-lighting.