Where in the world is Fan Bingbing?

[GeneChing]

'Disappearance' of top Chinese actress Fan Bingbing concerns fans (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-45034392)
By Kerry Allen
BBC Monitoring
4 hours ago

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GETTY IMAGES
Fan Bingbing recently received global attention for her appearance as Blink in the X-Men film franchise

Chinese social media users are questioning the whereabouts of one of China's biggest film stars.

Fan Bingbing is one of the world's highest paid actors, but media reports in the country say that she hasn't been seen in public since 1 July when she visited a children's hospital.

Social media users are also noting her unusual silence on the popular Sina Weibo microblog, where she has more than 62 million followers. She has not been active on her account since 23 July, when she "liked" a number of posts.

In May, prominent TV presenter Cui Yongyuan appeared to accuse Fan Bingbing of tax evasion. Her studio has denied any wrongdoing,

It has not commented on her whereabouts.

Social media concern

Ms Fan is known internationally as a singer and model, as well as for her appearance in the X-Men film franchise.

She is one of China's most influential celebrities and posts regularly on her Weibo account. Her posts consistently receive thousands of user comments.

This makes her current online silence unusual, and hundreds of thousands of social media users have been voicing their concern.

Many are replying to her most recent post on 2 June and asking for her to release a statement and confirm that she is well.

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SINA WEIBO
The normally active blogger's last Weibo post was on 2 June, and has hundreds of thousands of comments from concerned users

"We love you, Fan Bingbing," many users say. Another adds: "We are waiting for an answer."

Others question if she has been detained, but at present this is pure speculation. They note the recent, highly circulated allegations surrounding her in relation to a wider government tax evasion probe.

Some celebrities are alleged to have used so-called "yin-yang" contracts: dual contracts in which one sets out an actor's real earnings, and another details a lower figure, with the latter submitted to the tax authorities.

In June, the actress's studio addressed these allegations and said that the star had never signed dual contracts, "The studio and Fan Bingbing will fully cooperate with the relevant authority. We hope the investigation result can be released soon to answer the public doubt."

Report censored

In the past week, concern about Ms Fan among social media users has risen after a financial newspaper carried a controversial article hinting that she was under investigation.

The Economic Observer claimed on 26 July that several of Ms Fan's staff were being questioned by the police, and that her brother had been told that he was not allowed to leave the country. He has not commented.

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FREE WEIBO
Posts mentioning the Economic Observer article and an alleged investigation into Fan's staff have been censored from social media

The article was swiftly taken offline, and multiple posts that mentioned it, including some by state-affiliated media have been censored according to Free Weibo, a censorship-monitoring website.

Many financial newspapers in China are independent, but given their traditionally niche subject matter, are often overlooked by the government censors.

Media hint at concerns

Mainstream state media have steered clear of reporting on the whereabouts of Ms Fan.

Financial media have noted that the market value of Huayi Brothers, the production company that she is signed up to, has plunged some seven per cent in the past week. However, the company has since released a statement saying that this is unrelated to Ms Fan.

Independent media including Caixin Online have reported on the "rumours" that Ms Fan has been detained, and note that her studio has not responded to phone calls from the media or fans.

Some outlets say this could be because members of her staff are being investigated, but this is unconfirmed and both Ms Fan and her team could simply be taking a break from the limelight.

I've been following this story for a few weeks. It continues to grow. Perhaps this will need its own thread soon.

[GeneChing]

I'm splitting this off from China's most powerful celebrities (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?51397-China-s-most-powerful-celebrities) into an indie Where in the world is Fan Bingbing? thread.


CELEBRITY NEWS 5 hours ago
'X-Men' actress Fan Bingbing drops off social media, sparking concern among fans (http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2018/08/02/x-men-actress-fan-bingbing-drops-off-social-media-sparking-concern-among-fans.html)
By Katherine Lam | Fox News

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Chinese actress Fan Bingbing has disappeared from social media amid rumors she is the target of a tax evasion investigation and that she, her brother and boyfriend have been barred from leaving China. (AP)

Fan Bingbing, “X-Men” actress and one of China’s biggest movie stars, sparked concern among fans after she disappeared from social media for about a month amid rumors the celebrity is being investigated for tax evasion.

Fans began speculating the star was possibly in trouble after she went radio silent on China’s main microblogging service Weibo, where she has more than 62 million followers. The Chinese actress is usually active on the service and posts regularly.

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Chinese actress Fan Bingbing has disappeared from social media amid rumors she is the target of a tax evasion investigation. (AP)

Fan last posted on the social media service on July 2, the day after she was last seen in public visiting a children’s hospital, the South China Morning Post reported. Many people have commented on the July 2 post asking Fan to release a statement confirming she’s okay.


"We love you, Fan Bingbing," many Weibo users wrote, according to the BBC. "We are waiting for an answer."

Others said the last time Fan was active on Weibo was on July 23, when she “liked” several posts.


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bingbing_fan#hughjackman #xmen


Though it remains a mystery why Fan has been avoiding the spotlight, several reports online claim the actress and her brother have been barred from leaving China as authorities look into reports Fan was given dual contracts for her work: a public one listing her official salary and a private one stating her actual, much higher, pay. The contracts, dubbed “yin-yang” contracts, are used to evade taxes.

Chinese newspaper The Economic Observer reported Saturday that Fan and her brother Fan Chengcheng are involved in a tax evasion investigation that began in June. A person associated with a company linked to Fan is being accused of hiding and destroying evidence, a source told the newspaper. Several other people associated with Fan are being investigated.



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bingbing_fan (https://www.instagram.com/p/BIPQniNgacx/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=embed_loading_state_control)
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bingbing_fanPress conference for another new film "League Of Gods" in Beijing today.
Wardrobe: @ralphandrusso @mohiebdahabieh
Styled by: @minruir
#LeagueofGods #封神传奇 #ralphandrusso #ralphandrussocouture
Her boyfriend, actor Li Chen, is also reportedly barred from leaving China. He has not updated his account since July 6.

The report was posted on the newspaper’s website for about an hour before it was taken down — but had already been widely shared on the internet, the South China Morning Post reported.

Chinese media reports said neither Fan, her production company nor agent can be reached, boosting speculation that all have been caught up in the probe. Police rarely comment on such investigations until a conclusion has been reached.


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bingbing_fan (https://www.instagram.com/p/BiuL26ABRSA/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=embed_loading_state_control)
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114,611 likes
bingbing_fan#355Movie #CannesYouHandleUs
#电影355

Fan's production company released a statement on June 3 saying Fan never signed a “yin-yang” contract.

Fan has appeared in dozens of movies and TV series in China, but is best known internationally for her role as Blink in 2014's "X-Men: Days of Future Past." She is one of China's wealthiest entertainers, pulling down tens of millions of dollars for her roles, along with substantial amounts in appearance fees and product endorsements.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

[GeneChing]

Is Fan Bingbing, China’s No. 1 Actress, Really “Missing”? (https://www.wmagazine.com/story/fan-bingbing-missing)

https://media.wmagazine.com/photos/5851ef6dd3b7a5db18f33d3c/2:1/w_1600/FBB6-1166v.jpg

by Stephanie Eckardt
August 3, 2018 3:55 pm
Ellen von Unwerth for W

Is it really possible for Fan Bingbing, an actress-singer-model with dozens of millions of followers, whom Forbes has named the most influential Chinese celebrity for four years running, to get any privacy? Probably not, which is why a notable number of those followers have begun to worry that, for once, they haven't been hearing much at all about Fan. (She was last seen in public over a month ago, while visiting a children's hospital in Shanghai on July 1.)
Fans who are familiar with Fan's frequent presence on Weibo, though, seem much more concerned about her absence online rather than IRL. Fan doesn't post too much on social media, and especially not on Instagram, where she last posted in late May. She is, however, often on Weibo, which is why the fact that she hasn't "liked" any posts on the platform in over a week, since July 23, has been causing more and more of her 62 million followers to write her (unanswered) comments asking her to let them know that she's okay.

It's certainly not out of the ordinary for a celebrity to take a break over the summer—especially an overworked star who could use some time off the map (and away from notifications). In this case, though, some are seeing it as an alarming sign, notin that Fan has not been in the news cycle since the Chinese TV presenter Cui Yongyuan publicly accused her of tax evasion this past May, which made enough waves to cause shares in some of China's biggest film studios to plummet. (Fan has established more and more of an international presence since playing Blink in 2014's X-Men: Days of Future Past; she's currently set to star in the spy thriller 355 alongside Jessica Chastain, Penélope Cruz, and Lupita Nyong'o.)


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bingbing_fan (https://www.instagram.com/p/BimF4Mch-i2/?utm_source=ig_embed)
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bingbing_fan Top secret no more. Mission accepted! #355Movie #电影355 with @JessicaChastain @marioncotillard @penelopecruzoficial @lupitanyongo @simondavidkinberg #FreckleFilms @Filmnationent #CannesYouHandleUs


In June, Fan's personal film studio, which has yet to comment on her whereabouts, defended the actress, stating that she had never taken part in any of the so-called "yin-yang" contracts—meaning using both an official contract (with lower figures) submitted for taxes and a secret one (with actual earnings)—that Cui had accused her of using. They also stated that both she and the studio would "fully cooperate with the relevant authority."

Things were relevantly quiet on that front until July 26, when the Chinese financial newspaper The Economic Observer published an article claiming that the police were questioning several of her staff members, and that her brother, who has not commented on the matter, had been told he, like Fan, cannot leave the country. According to the BBC, it wasn't long before both the stories and others mentioning it were taken offline, and news hasn't followed from other mainstream Chinese state outlets since. Meanwhile, according to the Hollywood Reporter, outlets in Taiwan and Hong Kong have been reporting on rumors of Fan's arrest, as well as of those of her manager and personal assistant, and the possibility of her scenes being cut from Unbreakable Spirit, her upcoming Chinese film with Bruce Willis.

FAN BINGBING, QUEEN OF THE RED CARPET
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The actress stood out at the 63rd Annual Cannes Festival, where she wore a dramatic Laurence Hsu gown covered in illustrations of dragons.
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The actress stood out at the 63rd Annual Cannes Festival, where she wore a dramatic Laurence Hsu gown covered in illustrations of dragons.

Getty Images
FULL SCREEN
With all that going on, the Internet's imagination has naturally been running wild, with rumors that Fan has even been detained. It does, however, only seem natural that amid all the drama, Fan would want (or at the very least be told) to lie low, and simply hasn't felt up to pressing "like" on Weibo as of late.

First I've heard of 355. That sounds cool. Hope Bingbing is okay.

[GeneChing]

Jackie Chan refutes claims that he advised Fan Bingbing to seek refuge in US over tax evasion woes (http://www.asiaone.com/entertainment/jackie-chan-refutes-claims-he-advised-fan-bingbing-seek-refuge-us-over-tax-evasion)

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PHOTO: AFP
REI KUROHI AND JAN LEE
THE STRAITS TIMES Sep 03, 2018

Hong Kong action star Jackie Chan has refuted allegations that he had advised Chinese actress Fan Bingbing to seek refuge in the United States in the wake of an ongoing tax evasion scandal.

According to Hong Kong news outlet Apple Daily, Fan - one of Chinese entertainment's most recognisable faces - appeared at a Los Angeles immigration office on Friday morning (Aug 31) to enter the United States.

The source is reportedly a Twitter user, who believes that Fan had taken Chan's advice to seek refuge in the United States to ride out what is the biggest scandal in her two decades in showbiz.

But in response, Chan's company told Chinese news site ETtoday that the actor's involvement was "nonsense".

According to the Saturday ETtoday report, sources claimed that Fan had already been "taken in", suggesting that the actress may have been arrested.

The 36-year-old actress went dark in June after veteran Chinese host Cui Yongyuan accused her of tax evasion in late May. He implied that Fan has signed what is known as "yin and yang" contracts, where she reportedly had two contracts on Cell Phone 2, a Feng Xiaogang film.

One, meant to be given to the authorities, presented her pay as 10 million yuan (S$2 million) while another, used internally between Fan and the production company presented her pay as 50 million yuan (S$10 million). In total, she was set to receive 60 million yuan but would only be taxed for 10 million yuan.

Fan, the highest paid actress in China according to Forbes, denied the claims and Cui later walked back on the allegations - but the damage had already been done.

China's State Administration of Taxation published a statement on June 3, several days after Cui's allegations, which said that it has ordered its local bureau in Jiangsu province to investigate the tax evasion issue of those working in the film industry. Though no names were cited, Fan's film studio is based in Jiangsu.

Zhejiang Talent, one of the production companies of The Legend of Ba Qing - an epic Chinese drama that stars Fan alongside Chinese actor Gavin Gao - released a company report on Wednesday, which said that the television series has yet to receive a date of release due to allegations its stars have been involved in.

Aside from Fan's tax evasion woes, Gao was charged in June with two counts of aggravated sexual assault in Australia. Fan is also a shareholder of Zhejiang Talent.

The company said if it does not eventually receive a release date and the show is dropped from release, it will fall into some 740 million yuan of bad debts.

To add fuel to the fire, Fan, a mainstay on international red carpets like the Cannes Film Festival and an avid social media user, seemingly dropped off the map. Her account on Weibo, a Chinese microblogging site, has not been updated since June 2. She previously posted almost daily.

Rumours about Fan's predicament began to fly in the months since. There were reports alleging that Fan had been banned from acting for three years and barred from leaving the country.

Her fiance, Chinese actor Li Chen, has also maintained a low profile and kept mum about her current predicament.

Now I really want to see Cell Phone 2.

[GeneChing]

I wonder what would happen to Hollywood if we applied such a measure...


Fan Bingbing: Vanished Chinese star 'not socially responsible' (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-45426882)
By Kerry Allen
BBC Monitoring
11 September 2018

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WIREIMAGE
Fan Bingbing, who got a 0% score in the report, has not been seen in public since 1 July

Chinese film star Fan Bingbing has been ranked last in a report judging A-list celebrities on how "socially responsible" they are, fuelling further speculation about the whereabouts of the actress, who has not been seen in public for more than two months.

The 2017-2018 China Film and Television Star Social Responsibility Report, carried widely by state media outlets, ranks Chinese celebrities according to three criteria: professional work, charitable actions and personal integrity.

It praises celebrities who have become "relatively strong role models", but also highlights cases where it says they have had a "negative" social impact.

But what is most notable is its 0% rating for Fan Bingbing, one of China's biggest stars, who hasn't been seen in public since 1 July when she visited a children's hospital.

The report was authored by academics at Beijing Normal University.

Who is Fan Bingbing?

She is known internationally as a singer and model, as well as for her appearance in the X-Men film franchise.

Her name has been linked to a government probe involving celebrities using "yin-yang contracts" - a practice where one contract sets out an actor's real earnings, and another details a lower figure, with the latter submitted to the tax authorities.

Although Fan Bingbing's studio denies any wrongdoing, online users are speculating that the reason she scored 0% is a result of the widely-circulated allegations, which state media have said have had a negative impact on society.

There is no word on what has happened to Fan. However there is speculation she has been arrested.

Most recently, state-run Chinese publication Securities Daily published a report which said she had been placed "under control, and would "accept the legal decision".

But the story was pulled down a few hours later.

How does the report rank stars?

The authors said they studied the behaviour of 100 Chinese singers, actors, and public figures - based in China and abroad - to assess the extent of their social responsibility.

They did not specify exactly how they arrived at the results in the test, but said that their findings were based on "research and web-scraping".

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VISUAL CHINA GROUP
The three members of boyband TFBoys passed the 'socially responsible' test

Only nine celebrities were deemed to be socially responsible enough, however, with a pass requiring a score of more than 60%.The report stressed that celebrities had to do more to promote "positive energy" and hinted that they needed to be more aware of behaviour and actions that might have a "negative social impact".

"We wanted to have a more thorough evaluation of celebrities," Zhang Hongzhong, who led the project, told English-language news website Sixth Tone.

He said that many celebrities were in danger of being simply branded "little fresh meats" - an internet buzzword used to describe good looking young men - and that their activism and philanthropy work was often overlooked.

So who passed?

Top of the list is actor Xu Zheng (78%), who appeared in the highly acclaimed film Dying to Survive. The film was based on a true story about a Chinese man smuggling cheap Indian drugs into the mainland to help cancer sufferers.

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AFP
The Chinese government wants actors like Wu Zheng in 'Dying to Survive' to inspire young people

Two and three in the list are members of the hugely popular boy band TFBoys, in recognition of their philanthropic work. Another member comes fifth.

Actor Yang Yang (61.%), who ranks ninth, is highlighted because he set up a charity to help educate underprivileged children in remote mountainous regions.

How did people react?

State media are highlighting the report as a significant document, and outlets are praising the higher-ranked celebrities.

Social media users meanwhile - who have been long been fascinated by celebrity rankings - are weighing in on what the document might mean for their favourite celebrities, particularly Fan Bingbing.

Many users of the Sina Weibo microblog have voiced their surprise and concern that she has ranked so low, given there is no evidence of her being involved in any misconduct.

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VISUAL CHINA GROUP
Actor Jackie Chan recently donated 50,000 copies of his autobiography to the China Disabled Persons' Federation

"Fan Bingbing has been working on a public welfare project," one user said. Another added that for her to get zero was "not right; she does a lot of public welfare."

"When the Tianjin fire broke out, Fan Bingbing donated one million yuan ($145,655; £112,565) to the Tianjin Fire Brigade. Has all the good she's done before just been erased?" one asked.

The bad ratings given to other celebrities has caused annoyance as well. One user, for instance, pointed out that actor Jackie Chan and Tibetan singer Han Hong, who rank 42nd and 59th, are well-known philanthropists.

Why does this report matter?

Chinese celebrities have long understood that taking a path of "virtue" is key to maintaining mainland audiences, and that it's extremely difficult to bounce back after being linked to scandal.

The country's media has also long stressed that celebrities need to spread "positive energy" among young audiences; in other words, to be upbeat and promote healthy moral values.

So they have lauded celebrities who have, for example, openly condemned tobacco or drug use.

But celebrities who voice opinions in line with government rhetoric gain even higher praise, for example if they promote the importance of young audiences referring to the self-ruling island of Taiwan as a "Chinese region" rather than a "country".

This latest emphasis on social responsibility, which media and fans alike are taking as a new mark of power, could now put more pressure on them to do just that.

[GeneChing]

獨／范冰冰「進去已1個月」　北京高層曝囚禁時間表 (https://star.ettoday.net/news/1253681)
記者田暐瑋／台北報導

范冰冰1997年出道，在演藝圈打滾21年，如今卻因涉及3大重罪而「關進去」，據北京知情高層透露，她在 一開始的確被相關單位帶回偵訊，2天後就放回，但之後又被逮捕，一直到現在都沒有出來。這次大陸政府大動作 要制裁范冰冰，也傳出是為了讓外界見證「掃貪反腐」的決心，才會拿范冰冰來開刀。

►獨／范冰冰入獄「真的回不來了」！　北京知情高層證實下場慘：她全毀了

大陸5年來積極進行反腐行動，總共「處理」了153萬人，當中的5.8萬人被移送法辦，范冰冰也是其中一人 。被逮消息爆出3個月，范冰冰本人包括工作室、圈內好友都不敢出面說話，就連正式的官方聲明都沒有，案情讓 人霧裡看花，直到大陸官媒《證券日報》報導還涉嫌銀行違規放貸以及腐敗案件，顯見官方高層已點頭放出消息， 全案距離明朗化的階段已不遠。

►快訊／范冰冰工作室清空了！　官微停擺20天…物業公司出聲

https://cdn2.ettoday.net/images/3540/d3540688.jpg
▲范冰冰。（圖／翻攝自微博）

知情高層向《ETtoday星光雲》透露，范冰冰一下爆出被放出來、一下又被傳被捕，但真相其實是她一直都 「在裡面」。她在6月底被公安帶回到案說明，2天後的確一度被放回，但8月初再度被捕，這次就是真的被關， 直到現在人都還沒出來，高層也表示，她的下場很慘，演藝事業等於被宣判死刑，「真的回不來了」 。

名嘴崔永元5月爆料范冰冰的工作合約都是「陰陽合約」，引發大陸地稅局關注，隨即展開調查，雖然崔永元事後 滅火澄清陰陽合約指的並不是范冰冰，但為時已晚，不只經紀人穆曉光遭到逮捕，連范冰冰在經過一連串調查後， 也要接受法律制裁。

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▲范冰冰被捕入獄。（圖／翻攝自范冰冰微博）

范冰冰被爆出2次被傳訊到案說明，但事後詳細原因內部人員全數噤聲。據悉，大陸官方已掌握名冊，涉及100 位A咖藝人逃稅，日前網路上也傳出，接下來要調查的對象還有Y姓女星，以及W姓男偶像。自從范冰冰被捲入逃 稅事件後，多家媒體揭露范近5年來，收入高達人民幣10億元（約45億3800萬台幣），旗下公司有12家 之多，范本人擔任法人的就有5家，且當時崔永元更語出驚人表示，這樣的合同「還有一抽屜」，隨便一個當事人 都是娛樂圈大腕兒。

范冰冰遭大陸有關當局查稅事件鬧得沸沸揚揚，引發整個大陸整個娛樂圈人心惶惶，大陸稅務局7日發布新規定， 從8月1日起，針對藝人的課稅幅度將提升，從6.7％提升至42％，且從2018年8月起都要以42％追討 2018年1至6月的欠稅，因此范冰冰必須以42％的稅率，繳回過去6個月的真實收入欠稅。

https://cdn2.ettoday.net/images/3540/d3540689.jpg
▲范冰冰涉嫌3重罪。（圖／翻攝自微博）


googtrans

Duan / Fan Bingbing "I have been in for 1 month" Beijing high-rise exposure captivity schedule
Reporter Tian Hao / Taipei Report

Fan Bingbing debuted in 1997 and has been rolling in the entertainment industry for 21 years. Now he is "closed" because of the three major felony. According to Beijing's informed senior officials, she was brought back to the investigation by the relevant units at the beginning and returned after 2 days. However, he was arrested afterwards and has not come out until now. This time, the mainland government’s big move is to sanction Fan Bingbing. It is also said that in order to let the outside world witness the determination to “sweep greed and fight corruption”, Fan Bingbing will be used to open the knife.

►Independence/Fan Bingbing is in prison. "I really can't come back!" Beijing informed seniors confirmed the miserable: she was completely destroyed

The mainland has actively carried out anti-corruption operations in the past five years, and has handled a total of 1.53 million people, of which 58,000 were transferred to the law office. Fan Bingbing is also one of them. After being arrested for three months, Fan Bingbing himself did not dare to speak in the studio or in the circle. Even the official official statement was not available. The case was foggy until the mainland official media "Securities Daily" reported. Also suspected of bank illegal lending and corruption cases, it is obvious that the official high-level officials have nodded the news, the whole case is not far from the stage of clearing.
*
►News/Fan Bingbing Studio is empty! Official micro lockout for 20 days... Property company speaks

▲ Fan Bingbing. (Figure / flip from Weibo)

The informed seniors revealed to ETtoday Starlight Cloud that Fan Bingbing was released and was arrested, but the truth is that she has always been "inside." She was brought back to the case by the police at the end of June. It was once put back in 2 days, but was arrested again in early August. This time it was really shut down. Until now, people have not yet come out. The top executive also said that she is going to end. Very miserable, the acting career is equal to being sentenced to death, "I really can't come back."

Cui Yongyuan's work contract in May broke the news of Fan Bingbing's work contract, which triggered the attention of the mainland local tax bureau, and immediately launched an investigation. Although Cui Yongyuan clarified that the yin and yang contract was not Fan Bingbing, it was too late, not only the agent Mu Xiaoguang was arrested, and even Fan Bingbing had to accept legal sanctions after a series of investigations.

▲ Fan Bingbing was arrested and imprisoned. (Figure / flip from Fan Bingbing Weibo)

Fan Bingbing was rumored to be sent to the case twice, but afterwards, the internal staff were all booing. It is reported that the mainland official has mastered the roster, involving 100 A café artists to evade taxes, which was also reported on the Internet a few days ago. The next object to be investigated is the female surname Y and the male idol. Since Fan Bingbing was involved in the tax evasion incident, many media have revealed that Fan’s income has reached RMB 1 billion (about RMB 4.538 billion) in the past five years. There are 12 companies in the company and there are 5 companies in the company. At that time, Cui Yongyuan even said that the contract "has a drawer", and that a party is a big fan of entertainment.

Fan Bingbing was ravaged by the relevant authorities in mainland China, which triggered the entire entertainment industry. The mainland tax bureau issued a new regulation on the 7th. From August 1st, the taxation rate for artists will increase, from 6.7%. To 42%, and from August 2018, 42% will be required to recover the tax owed from January to June 2018. Therefore, Fan Bingbing must pay the current income tax owed for the past 6 months at a rate of 42%.

▲ Fan Bingbing is suspected of three serious crimes. (Figure / flip from Weibo)

Now we know. She's in the joint.

[GeneChing]

These English-language news stories seem to be just catching up to this thread I've been posting to for over a month. And I'm late to the boat on this story because I didn't think much of it at first. But now, it's blossomed into something intriguing.

The stories below seem to have missed the story above, which means two possibilities: 1. WaPo, THR, & Bloomberg don't follow Chinese news that carefully or 2. I was duped by Chinese fake news (I was duped for a fleeting moment this weekend with the Danny Trejo death hoax (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70140-Man-at-Arms-Art-of-War-New-Original-Series-from-EL-REY-Network&p=1310485#post1310485) but some quick web double-checking alleviated that).


A government institute gave China’s biggest celebrity a low 'social responsibility’ rating. She hasn’t been seen for months. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/09/11/government-institute-gave-chinas-biggest-celebrity-low-social-responsibility-rating-she-hasnt-been-seen-months/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.67dfe7a74bf3)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/resizer/n5TtuHoVAhSEMOV23QS91eX-di4=/1484x0/arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/U2A6M5E7VQI6RI65FIMZD4DV2U.jpg
Chinese actress, singer and producer Fan Bingbing attends the Viscap fashion show during Beijing's Fashion Week in 2013. (Mark RalstonAFP/Getty Images) (MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images)

By Gerry Shih
September 11 at 2:11 PM

Fan Bingbing is one of China’s biggest celebrities, a ubiquitous actress, model and singer who earned more in 2016 than Hollywood A-listers such as Amy Adams and Charlize Theron, according to Forbes.

But in July, the “X-Men” actress suddenly vanished. And in the weeks since, the mystery surrounding her disappearance from public view has only deepened amid speculation that she ran afoul of Chinese authorities.

The latest clue emerged Tuesday after a state-affiliated think tank and Beijing university ranked Fan dead last in their annual “Social Responsibility Report” — she earned a 0 out of 100 — citing her “negative social impact,” among other things.

The report, which was widely covered by state media, didn’t shed any more light on Fan’s predicament, but it does add to the sense that China's Communist Party is sending a message to the country’s burgeoning entertainment industry.

In June, days before Fan disappeared from all public events and stopped posting on social media, the party’s propaganda department, which plays a key role in media regulation and censorship, issued a notice chastising the film industry for “distorting social values,” “fostering money worship tendencies” and encouraging Chinese youths to “blindly chase celebrities.”

Other reports have since emerged that Fan is on the hook technically for tax evasion. She was accused this year on social media of signing two copies of a film contract — a practice colloquially dubbed a “yin-yang” agreement, wherein the undervalued version is submitted to tax authorities.

Even as the Communist Party steps up its push to create a Chinese cultural juggernaut that competes with the United States in “soft power,” it has become increasingly uncomfortable with the mass culture it has spawned.

In recent years, media regulators have cracked down on the reality TV industry for manufacturing child stars and warned producers against making shows that serve as “venues for displaying fame and wealth.” Propaganda authorities started inserting short vignettes reminding audiences of China’s “core socialist values” before screening feature films by the likes of Jackie Chan.

Last year, 100 top Chinese filmmakers and pop stars were summoned to study the Communist Party’s 19th Party Congress and President Xi Jinping's political theory — a situation that online wags compared to locking Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift in a room and making them read and praise President Trump’s book “The Art of the Deal.”



Yufan Huang
@georgetoparis
Imagine locking Justine Bieber Taylor Swift Bruno Mars and many others in a room and asking them to read and praise The Art of the Deal


Keith Zhai (https://twitter.com/QiZHAI/status/936052155827437569?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5E tweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E936068526443581441&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fwor ld%2F2018%2F09%2F11%2Fgovernment-institute-gave-chinas-biggest-celebrity-low-social-responsibility-rating-she-hasnt-been-seen-months%2F)
@QiZHAI
More than 100 Chinese actors,actresses, film makers and etc gathered to study the spirit of 19th party congress http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/l9z1cOHaigXGYq9ynOzjxQ …

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DP2GeDVUMAEQAeN.jpghttps://pbs.twimg.com/media/DP2GeDWVAAEkiqr.jpghttps://pbs.twimg.com/media/DP2GeDWVwAEGz8y.jpg
8:05 PM - Nov 29, 2017
151
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If there’s anyone who personifies China’s celebrity culture, Fan is it. Since exploding onto the scene as a teenager in the late 1990s, Fan, now 36, has starred in a string of Chinese hits, culminating with a role in 2014's “X-Men: Days of Future Past.” Her name is commonly associated with Chinese youths’ newfound obsession with plastic surgery, and her aquiline nose and distinctive jaw line are said to be popular requests. Fan's face is everywhere on Chinese streets, hawking Cartier jewelry, Mercedes sedans, Moët & Chandon champagne and Louis Vuitton couture.


As her disappearance has dragged on in recent weeks, more rumors have surfaced that Fan is facing an acting ban — or even house arrest. Overseas censorship trackers have noted that social media posts and news reports about Fan's whereabouts have quickly been scrubbed.

Given the Chinese government’s propensity for secrecy, there probably won't be any solid news until the matter is sorted out behind closed doors, and Fan pays up for her rumored tax transgressions and makes a contrite statement to the public.

Until then, the message from the country’s leaders is silent but clear: The entertainment industry may thrive but only on the party's terms.

[GeneChing]

Is Chinese Star Fan Bingbing Missing? (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/fan-bingbing-missing-1142509)
8:10 PM PDT 9/11/2018 by Patrick Brzeski

https://cdn1.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/landscape_928x523/2017/06/GettyImages656055992H2017.jpg
Getty Images
Fan Bingbing

The sudden disappearance from public view and social media of China's highest-paid actress has fueled speculation ranging from rumors of her arrest to reports that she has fled to Los Angeles seeking asylum.
Just a few months ago, Fan Bingbing was China's highest-paid actress, the go-to face for Chinese luxury and set to co-star in Universal's upcoming female-ensemble thriller 355 opposite Jessica Chastain, Penelope Cruz and Lupita Nyong'o.

Now she's essentially missing in action, her whereabouts unknown and her name maligned in China's state-backed media. Fan, best known outside China for starring as Blink in the X-Men franchise, hasn't been seen in public since July 1. She also has been silent on social media since July 23. Her mysterious disappearance has sparked a wave of speculation among Chinese fans and onlookers, with rumors ranging from claims that she is under the custody of Chinese authorities to reports that she has escaped to Los Angeles to seek asylum in the United States.

The Hollywood Reporter reached out to Fan's reps, but have not, as yet, received a reply.

Established facts are scarce, but what's clear is that Fan's previously high-power brand is under considerable pressure in China. The trouble for the actress began earlier this summer when her name became the focus of a very public tax evasion scandal that engulfed the Chinese entertainment industry.

The huge pay and myriad lifestyle perks of Hollywood movie stars may be a cliche of the U.S. entertainment industry; but in China, the government has tried to limit the earnings of top actors for years. Authorities argue that the huge salaries of elite celebrities are distorting the local film industry and that lavish celebrity lifestyles are sending the wrong signal to China's youth, encouraging "money worship" instead of "core socialist values." China's film regulators have introduced various mechanisms to try to tamp down star remuneration, from outright caps to heavy taxes for high-end earners.

In July, a disgruntled TV host leaked documents demonstrating an alleged tax-dodge scheme by an unnamed major star — instantly identified online as Fan. The materials were said to reveal the apparently common, but thoroughly illegal, practice of "yin-yang contracting," whereby production companies provide actors with two sets of pay contracts: one small one to submit to the tax authorities, and a second revealing the star's much larger true pay. The leaked docs were said to show that Fan tried to claim $1.56 million (RMB10 million) for four days work on an upcoming Chinese film when her secret pay actually totaled an additional $7.8 million (RMB 50 million).

Fan's representatives strenuously denied the allegations, saying that they amounted to slander and that she had hired a prominent law firm in Beijing to explore pressing charges. But various authorities in the Chinese government also announced that they would be launching a series of investigations, including one in China's Jiangsu Province, where Fan's company is based.

In the weeks since, the crackdown on celeb pay in China has only escalated, with many of the country's most prominent TV and film companies voluntarily signing a joint pledge to abide by the government's wishes.

Meanwhile, Fan's public profile continues to take hits. Hong Kong tabloid The Apple Daily — known for occasionally making spurious claims — alleged in an Aug. 31 report that the actress had been spotted at a Los Angeles immigration office. The paper went further by citing an unnamed "industry source" who said that Fan was heeding the advice of none less than Jackie Chan, who had urged her to seek asylum in the U.S. (Chan's company promptly pushed back against the claim as "nonsense").

Last week, the drama took another turn when a state-run Chinese publication, Securities Daily, reported that Fan actually had been placed “under control” by authorities in China, and would “accept the legal decision.” The story instantly went viral on Chinese social media, only to be retracted without explanation hours later, fueling still more speculation.

The latest shot came last Sunday when a group of academics from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences published a report ranking the social responsibility of China's 100 biggest stars — with Fan scoring dead last. The study purported to assess Chinese celebrities according to their "professional work, charitable actions and personal integrity," determining whether they are a "strong role model" or have a "negative" social impact on China. Actor Xu Zheng, star of last summer's biggest hit, the socially minded dramedy Dying to Survive, ranked first with a social responsibility score of 78 percent. Fan, meanwhile, received the lowest possible score — zero percent.

By all appearances, the report is a piece of political pandering rather than anything like a legitimate work of social science. Yet it has only added to Fan's woes: shortly after its publication, the study was picked up and discussed by China's official state media outlets, including the People's Daily and Xinhua.

I'm starting to wonder if this recent coverage (after this has been going on for months) is a media counterpoint to the success of Crazy Rich Asians (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70914-Crazy-Rich-Asians).

[GeneChing]

Movie Star’s Disappearance Puts Perils of China Showbiz in Spotlight (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-11/movie-star-s-absence-shows-perils-of-show-business-in-china)
Bloomberg News
September 11, 2018, 2:00 PM PDT Updated on September 12, 2018, 3:00 AM PDT
Crackdown on big pay also seen eroding star-power in industry
Box-office is booming, but flops still weigh on profit margins

https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i_szp.SvYdlw/v1/800x-1.jpg
Fan Bingbing Photographer: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images

Up until a few months ago, the future looked bright for Fan Bingbing. As one of China’s biggest movie stars, she had featured in a couple of Hollywood superhero blockbusters and scores of local films, with many other projects in the pipeline.

Then in June, she became embroiled in a scandal about movie stars under-reporting their earnings, resulting in Chinese tax authorities investigating the industry -- including Fan -- for possible evasion. The 36-year-old actress, who has 63 million followers on the Twitter-like Weibo, has since vanished from public view-- no more social media updates, no more paparazzi photos and no more public appearances. Fan has denied wrongdoing and a representative for her studio could not be reached for comment.

For film executives, Fan’s disappearance is a reminder of the perils of show business in the most-regulated major entertainment market in the world, where the Communist Party weighs in on everything from the appropriateness of costumes to the salaries of movie stars. The episode is also prompting Chinese studios to wean off a reliance on A-list stars to drive big hits, a shift Hollywood made years ago.

“The crackdown will force studios to focus on making quality content rather than simply relying on the star-driven formula,” said Leiger Yang, founding partner at Beijing-based Landmark Capital, which invests in entertainment start-ups and studios.

A shift away from star-driven fare would come just as China’s cinema boom is regaining momentum, fueled by local hits steadily displacing Hollywood blockbusters. But underneath that healthy gloss, top Chinese studios including Huayi Brothers Media Corp. and Zhejiang Huace Film & TV Co. said in annual reports that higher celebrity pay is threatening profit margins.

Is China’s Movie Bubble About to Pop? Read Adam Minter’s View

Slipping Margins

Fan vanished from public view one day before the State Administration of Taxation on June 3 announced a probe into the star’s tax filings after a former China Central Television host posted what appeared to be partially redacted contracts that allegedly disguised compensation Fan received from a studio for a film. Weeks later, the host said the contracts weren’t related to the star.

Fan’s silence and the crackdown are also intended to make a political point, said Stanley Rosen, a University of Southern California political science professor who studies China and its film industry.

“Social media and public opinion, as you know, are important drivers of policies in this area, particularly when it comes to perceived inequalities, the super-rich, and cheating,” said Rosen. Still, he predicts the government won’t deepen its crackdown in a way that harms the industry longer term.

Authorities still want the industry to grow fast enough to surpass North American box office, he said.

Unsure Bets

While authorities may not directly undermine bankable stars, industry trends show stellar casts are no longer sure bets.

Just before “Dying to Survive,” a low-budget Chinese comedy-drama without big stars became the summer smash hit, “Asura,” the big-budget, star-studded epic on mythology bombed at the box office and was withdrawn immediately after its opening weekend. Trade magazine Variety called it "the most expensive flop in Chinese history.”

Television streaming is also drawing fans to dramas without big stars.

“Story of Yanxi Palace,” a 70-episode drama co-produced by and streamed on iQiyi, China’s Netflix, emerged as a surprising summer hit with a mostly young, lesser-known cast. A Qing dynasty tale of scheming concubines, the drama has been streamed more than 15 billion times, according to iQiyi.

The success of the drama “brings a new turning point and new opportunities to the industry that has been pressured by excessive compensation for celebrities," iQiyi CEO Gong Yu said in Beijing Aug. 26 at an event to celebrate the drama’s conclusion. "The industry should stop overcompensating celebrities in low-quality productions just because they have huge fan bases."

Quality Focus

Gong’s streaming platform was among a group of film and TV companies that issued a joint statement on Aug. 10 saying they would work together to resist overpaying top talent and devote more resources to better productions.

Over time, this will lead to a reduction in shoddy productions and give the industry an opportunity to focus on quality, said Yin Hong, a professor of TV and film studies at Tsinghua University.

Only about half of the 800 or so films made by Chinese studios last year made it to a cinema and among those 400, fewer than a quarter sold at least 100 million yuan ($14.5 million) in tickets. That’s in a market where the threshold for a hit is considered about 1 billion yuan in sales.

“The industry is undergoing a lot of pain right now,” said Yin. “But if dealt properly, it will be a good opportunity.”

— With assistance by Jing Yang De Morel

Remember when the majority of U.S. moviegoers only knew Fan Bingbing as a flower vase (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?66153-yellow-face-white-washing&p=1296375#post1296375)?

[GeneChing]

SEPTEMBER 14, 2018 / 4:40 AM / UPDATED 4 MINUTES AGO
A lady vanishes: In China, a movie star disappears amid culture crackdown (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-showbiz-fan-bingbing/a-lady-vanishes-in-china-a-movie-star-disappears-amid-culture-crackdown-idUSKCN1LU1J4?utm_source=applenews)
Pei Li, Adam Jourdan
6 MIN READ

BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Fan Bingbing, an A-list Chinese movie star who has appeared in the “X-Men” and “Iron Man” film franchises, has more than 62 million followers online in China and fronted campaigns for Montblanc watches and De Beers diamonds, has disappeared.

https://s3.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20180914&t=2&i=1304294916&w=1200&r=LYNXNPEE8D11O
FILE PHOTO: Director Wang Xiaoshuai (R) and cast member Fan Bingbing attend a news conference for the film "Rizhao Chongqing" at the 63rd Cannes Film Festival, France May 13, 2010. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo
The star’s vanishing act - she dropped off the radar in June when reports started to swirl that she was involved in a probe into tax evasion in the film industry - has sparked wild speculation in China about her fate, including reports the actress had been detained.

Reuters was unable to contact Fan. Calls to her agent went unanswered. When asked about Fan, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry replied: “Do you think this is a question of diplomacy?” The Beijing Public Security Bureau declined to comment.

The real-life drama has been playing out at a time when Beijing is tightening the reins on popular culture, looking to stamp out behavior seen as going against the ruling Communist Party’s ideological line and co-opting movie stars, pop bands and online celebrities to endorse socialist values.

“It is written in our new movie promotion law that entertainers need to pursue both professional excellence and moral integrity,” said Si Ruo, a researcher at the School of Journalism and Communication at China’s prestigious Tsinghua University.

“In the unbridled growth of the industry in the past few years, we might have overlooked the need for positive energy, so the government’s intervention is reasonable.”

Fan Bingbing is the most prominent example. The actress, 36, is China’s equivalent of Hollywood star Jennifer Lawrence. She topped Forbes’ China celebrity rich list last year with earnings of 300 million yuan ($43.78 million).

https://s3.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20180914&t=2&i=1304294915&r=LYNXNPEE8D11P
FILE PHOTO: 71st Cannes Film Festival - Screening of the film "Ash Is Purest White" (Jiang hu er nv) in competition - Red Carpet Arrivals - Cannes, France, May 11, 2018. Fan Bingbing poses. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe/File Photo

A Chinese TV anchor in May was widely reported to have posted tax-dodging pay agreements online known as “yin-yang” contracts - one setting out the real agreed payment terms and a second with a lower figure for the tax authorities - that appeared to implicate Fan.

Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post reported that Fan’s studio denied she had ever signed separate contracts for a single job. China’s tax bureau said in June it was launching a tax evasion investigation into the film and television industry.

CULTURE CLEAN-UP

But the culture clean-up is more widespread, snaring video games, online bloggers and rap artists. Critics say it threatens to stifle creativity in some sectors, and is hitting the bottom lines of firms such as tech and gaming giant Tencent.

State-run media have begun using phrases such as “tainted artists”, with official bodies pledging to ban stars who behave badly, including drug taking, gambling or visiting prostitutes.

An open letter earlier this month from members of the Beijing Trade Association for Performances said the body would “purify” the city’s entertainment and performance sector and guide artists towards “core socialist values”.

“Celebrities are seen as a weapon in the Party’s ideological battle, which is fought across all sectors all the time,” said Jonathan Sullivan, Director of China Programmes at the University of Nottingham.

China has long sought to control the creative arts, from censoring movies to literature. However, a boom in online media has prompted a new push to cleanse the arts world, as President Xi Jinping looks to tighten his grip over a huge and diverse cultural scene popular with China’s youth.

https://s4.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20180914&t=2&i=1304330363&r=LYNXNPEE8D1AY
Fan Bingbing poses on a pier at the photocall for the film "355" at the 71st Cannes Film Festival, May 10, 2018. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard

That drive has created a dragnet that has swept over the creative arts, leaving few unaffected.

Fangu, a grunge band from Beijing, which has toured across China, said it had hit an issue with its name, which translates literally as “anti-bone”, though means something closer to “rebellious spirit”.

The band was forced to change its name this week ahead of a concert in Shanghai.

“The relevant bodies do not allow the word ‘anti’ so we have to change the name temporarily,” Qi Tian, an assistant to the band, told Reuters.

Video game makers have had to tweak their offerings to add patriotic Chinese elements. Others have simply seen approvals withheld. Big media platforms have been rapped for not censoring their content enough and some have had to take sites offline.

A report this month from a state university and circulated in official media, ranked Chinese stars in order of their social responsibility, including their moral conduct - underscoring an increasingly puritanical focus on good behavior.

Fan came in last place with zero points.

The ongoing shake-up is also hitting China’s burgeoning movie and entertainment industry hard. Share prices of related companies tanked after the government probe was announced and many are conducting self-checks on their tax situations.


Claire Dong, partner and attorney at Beijing-based Tiantai law firm, said there has been a surge of consulting requests since Fan got into hot water.

New policies are swiftly eroding the favorable tax treatment that actors and artists once enjoyed.

“This is what the government needed to do,” Dong said. “The government needed to guide the actors to be more focused on acting, not money making.” ($1 = 6.8528 Chinese yuan renminbi)

Editing by John Ruwitch and Alex Richardson

Is this what happens when the government controls media outlets? Looks like it.

[GeneChing]

There's so much tension between U.S. & P.R.C. with the looming trade war that something like this is good media fodder.



Fan Bingbing: Has China's most famous actress been disappeared by the Communist party? (https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/14/asia/fan-bingbing-china-celebrity-intl/index.html)
By Steven Jiang, Ben Westcott and Nanlin Fang, CNN

Updated 9:06 AM ET, Mon September 17, 2018

(CNN)Imagine if one day Jennifer Lawrence was walking the red carpet in Los Angeles and the next she vanished completely with no word about where she was.

It might sound ludicrous, or terrifying, but it's the reality in China, where one of the country's most famous actresses has disappeared without a trace amid an uproar over tax evasion by celebrities.
Fan Bingbing, one of China's highest-paid and most bankable stars, has appeared in both Chinese and Western films, including the multimillion-dollar X-Men franchise.
Across the country, her face once adorned thousands of advertisements, her star power used to sell a galaxy of luxury brands, from Cartier to Louis Vuitton. She was a regular sight at major award shows and fashion ceremonies. In 2015, Time Magazine named her China's "most famous actress."
But the film star hasn't been seen in public since early June, when, according to a post on her verified social-media account, she went to visit a children's hospital in Tibet.
In an article by state media Securities Daily on September 6, which was later deleted, the publication said Fan had been brought "under control and about to receive legal judgment."
No official statement has been made as to Fan's whereabouts, or any potential criminal charges against the actress.
However, in a country where top celebrities are forced to keep an inoffensive public profile to stay in the Chinese government's good graces, people have drawn their own conclusions about the actress' location.
"If you are a billionaire, then that is something that obviously you can enjoy to a certain extent, but you've got to be very, very wary that you don't at any stage cross a red line of some sort and fall afoul of the Chinese Communist Party," Fergus Ryan, a cyber analyst with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told CNN.
In 2011, the country's best-known artist, Ai Weiwei, was detained for almost three months during which time his whereabouts were unclear. He was later released after he signed a confession authorities described as being related to tax evasion.

https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/180914111535-02-fan-bingbing-super-169.jpg
Fan Bingbing and Hugh Jackman arrive at the Australian premiere of 'X-Men: Days of Future Past" on May 16, 2014 in Melbourne, Australia.
Yin yang contracts

Fan's purported problems began when alleged copies of a film contract she had signed were leaked onto China's social media in late May.
According to state tabloid Global Times, she had two different contracts, one for tax purposes saying she was paid $1.5 million (10 million yuan) and a separate, private contract for $7.5 million (50 million yuan).
It's a practice known in China as "yin-yang contracts," a form of tax evasion where the first, smaller contract is reported to authorities while the second, larger one is treated as tax-free income.
The man behind the leak, Chinese TV host Cui Yongyuan, apologized in June to Fan for his actions, but the same month the State Administration of Taxation of China urged investigators to look into allegations of yin-yang contracts in the country's film industry.

https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/180914173057-02-fan-bingbing-super-169.jpg
US actor Will Smith (L) and Chinese actress Fan Bingbing pose as they arrive on May 23, 2017 at the Cannes Film Festival in France.

Fan's team issued a furious denial at the time but the actress hasn't been seen in public since the dispute.
In September, China's Beijing Normal University released a report, lauded as the first "in the world" and heavily promoted in Chinese state media, which ranked the country's stars by their level of "social responsibility." Fan was ranked last, with a score of 0 out of 100.
A producer with a major Chinese studio told CNN the practice of having two contracts, one of them smaller to avoid paying too much tax, was "universal" in the film industry.
He said everyone was worried following Fan's disappearance, especially because "almost every contract has some irregularities" and won't stand up to a serious audit.
Like other industry insiders CNN spoke to, he declined to be named due to the political sensitivity of the topic.
Scaring celebrities into line
Jonathan Landreth, former Beijing-based Asia editor for the Hollywood Reporter and longtime observer of China's entertainment industry, told CNN the Chinese Communist Party was treading a tricky line, keen to use high-profile celebrities to sell the "Chinese Dream," but not wanting to promote the stark income divide.
"Maybe this is just scaring folk to ... start paying taxes. If someone were to get busted, then I think it would send a ripple effect to how film production goes forward in the coming years," Landreth said.
An executive in a foreign film studio's China office told CNN the lack of A-list celebrities in China increased the bargaining power and earnings of a lucky few -- high-profile performers like Fan.
But while cracking down on them might solve other problems, she said it wouldn't help address the fundamental lack of talent across the Chinese film and television industries.
Combined with strict ideological control, such measures act only to create a "sad situation" in China's creative industry, she said.
The controls, though, can only go so far. The Chinese government needs the high-profile celebrities to help drive commerce, both domestically and internationally, to promote China, said Landreth.
The crackdown may in fact be intended to solve a different problem facing authorities. "It has long been an open secret that a movie budget is a great place to hide money," said Landreth.
The Communist Party's leadership may hope that by shining a light on celebrity tax avoidance, it could deflect attention and avoid closer public scrutiny of the rumored corruption among top government officials and their families, Landreth told CNN.
Spreading 'positive energy'
The Chinese Communist Party has long had an uncomfortable relationship with celebrities.
In recent years, state media has called on celebrities to spread "positive energy" on the internet. The threat of career-ending trouble with authorities has led the country's stars to pay attention to the party's wishes.

[GeneChing]

So maybe my post above (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70896-Where-in-the-world-is-Fan-Bingbing&p=1310531#post1310531) was fake Chinese news? It seems unlikely that some of these major news outlets would miss that. But who knows with news nowadays, right?


China's Leading Actress Fan Bingbing Has Vanished. Here’s What to Know (http://time.com/5394782/fan-bingbing-missing-china-chinese-actress/)
By ELI MEIXLER / HONG KONG 12:39 AM EDT

In past years, actress Fan Bingbing was a regular presence on film festival red carpets and fashion catwalks from Barcelona to Busan. And then, suddenly, she wasn’t.

Film fans are expressing alarm at Fan’s disquieting recent disappearance from public life: she was last seen on July 1, while visiting a children’s hospital. Her account on China’s popular Sina Weibo social media network, where she has 63 million followers, has been silent since July 23.

Speculation is linking the disappearance of Fan, one of cinema’s top-earners, to an alleged tax evasion scandal at a time when China’s state-controlled film industry is cutting back on bloated budgets and star-driven blockbusters.

If so, it would be a swift reversal for the celluloid superstar, whose rapid ascent as an actress and fashion icon seemed eclipsed only by her potential. A Chinese state news report assured readers last week that matters surrounding the actress—who featured in 2017’s TIME 100—were “under control.” But like its subject, the report quickly disappeared.


Here’s what we know:

A rising star

Not long ago, Fan, 36, seemed poised to become one of the biggest crossover stars in the world: a China-born, English-speaking workaholic armed with a formidable combination of acting, singing, and modeling skills.

Fan became a Chinese household name in 1999 with the TV series My Fair Princess, but broke into stardom in 2003’s Cell Phone, the year’s highest-grossing Chinese film, for which she won Best Actress honors at the Hundred Flowers Awards, China’s equivalent of the Golden Globes.

Fan won again in 2008, and began to pick up leading roles and international festival awards from Taiwan, Tokyo, and San Sebastián. In 2016, she earned $17 million, according to Forbes, making her the world’s fifth-highest paid actress. The following year, she sat on the Cannes Film Festival Official Competition Jury, where she promised to assess films “from an Asian perspective.”

She also logged side roles American films like X-Men: Days of Future Past and Ironman 3 after, as she told TIME last year, “[Hollywood] wanted to add Asian faces and found me.” It was effective: her brief role as “Blink” helped propel X-Men to a $39.35 million opening weekend in China.

Earlier this year, she was cast in 355, an espionage thriller, among a multinational ensemble that included Jessica Chastain, Penélope Cruz, Lupita Nyong’o, and Marion Cotillard. Her place in the pantheon of leading actors seemed secure. “In 10 years’ time…I’m sure I will be the heroine of X-Men,” she predicted to TIME last February.

A hint of scandal

But her once certain ascension was jeopardized in May, when CCTV presenter Cui Yongyuan leaked a pair of contracts that allegedly showed Fan double-billing an unidentified production, first for 10 million renminbi ($1.6 million), and then for 50 million renminbi ($7.8 million) for the same work.

The documents appeared to reveal an arrangement, known as “yin-yang” contracts, wherein one contract reflects an actor’s actual earnings while a second, lower figure is submitted to tax authorities, the BBC reported. According to the South China Morning Post, Cui then called for the Chinese authorities to “step up regulations on show business.”

In June, the Jiangsu Province State Administration of Taxation opened a tax evasion investigation focusing on the entertainment industry. Fan’s film studio, which denied the allegations, is based in Jiangsu, according to the Post.

The lack of an official statement on her whereabouts has spurred tabloid speculation that Fan was banned from acting or placed under house arrest. Last week, according to the Guardian, a report in China’s state-run Securities Journal claimed that Fan would “accept legal judgement,” though the article did not specify her offense, and was removed shortly after publication.

The whiff of impropriety has already impacted her cachet: Australian vitamin brand Swisse suspended use of Fan’s image in advertisements, while her name was removed from promotional materials for the upcoming Unbreakable Spirit, starring Bruce Willis.

Adding insult to financial and professional injury, the BBC reports that Fan has been rated last in a ranking of Chinese celebrities’ personal integrity and charitable work, scoring zero out of 100 in the 2017-2018 China Film and Television Star Social Responsibility Report published Tuesday by a Chinese university. That’s despite the fact that Fan co-founded a charity to provide surgery for children with congenital heart disease in rural Tibet, which she called her “greatest achievement” in a 2003 interview with the Financial Times. In 2015, she also donated a million renminbi ($146,000) to relatives of firemen killed in the Tianjin chemical warehouse disaster; the following year a different index listed Fan among the 10 most philanthropic Chinese celebrities.

A cautionary tale

Other, more salacious theories have claimed to account for Fan’s fall from grace.

Last year, she filed a defamation lawsuit against exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, who alleged sexual affairs between celebrities, including Fan, and top Chinese Communist Party officials. And when the yin-yang contracts came to light, Fan was shooting a sequel to Cell Phone that Cui, her CCTV accuser, complained bore an uncomfortable resemblance to his own life, the Post reports.

Actor Jackie Chan has meanwhile dispelled rumors that he recommended Fan seek asylum in the U.S.

She may also be the victim of industry belt-tightening, following a series of costly flops. Last year, the $150 million, Matt Damon-led The Great Wall, China’s most expensive film ever, recouped just $18.4 million in its North American opening. In July, the blockbuster Asura was promptly pulled from Chinese box offices after generating just $7.4 million. In June, the government instituted new salary ceilings on film and TV actors, blaming “sky-high” salaries and yin-yang contracts for creating a “distorted” culture of “money worship,” according to the BBC.

Fan’s plight also underscores fundamental divisions between Hollywood and the Chinese film industry, where state censors still exert considerable control over content and celebrate stars who advocate fealty to the Communist Party.

But Fan’s supporters have remain loyal, yearning for news or sight of the absent actress. “I have a hunch that you will be back, right?,” one posted on Weibo. “We’ll wait for you”

[GeneChing]

Now this is getting real. We've discussed Feng several times here because he's a significant director, but he hasn't done that much in the way of martial arts films, except for The Banquet (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?43584-The-Banquet).


Fan Bingbing Scandal Widens as Famed Director Is Cut From High-Profile Film (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/fan-bingbing-scandal-widens-as-famed-director-is-cut-high-profile-film-1144866)
1:51 AM PDT 9/18/2018 by Patrick Brzeski

https://cdn1.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/landscape_928x523/2017/09/gettyimages-623835804.jpg
Getty
Feng Xiaogang

The removal of a cameo featuring legendary filmmaker Feng Xiaogang from Cannes favorite 'Ash Is the Purest White' has lit up Chinese social media and spurred speculation that he could be the next brought low by the controversy.
The swirling tax-evasion scandal that has engulfed the Chinese film industry, forcing the disappearance of A-list star Fan Bingbing, may have just dented the reputation of another major figure: veteran director Feng Xiaogang.

China's entertainment trade press was awash Monday with the news that a high-profile cameo by Feng in arthouse star Jia Zhangke's latest film, Ash Is the Purest White, was cut.

Ash Is the Purest White, a decade-spanning crime melodrama, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May, where Fan Bingbing, in one of her last major public appearances, walked the red carpet in support of the film. Feng, one of China's most esteemed directors and an occasional character actor, also made a brief but eye-catching appearance in the film as a doctor.

But during the China premiere of the film in Beijing on Sunday, Feng's scene was conspicuously missing from a newly cut version, and Fan was nowhere to be seen at the event in her customary haute couture. Chinese social media instantly lit up with speculation that Jia's hand had been forced by China's Film Bureau — the assumption being that Feng's removal was necessary for the film to gain approval for its wide release on Friday. Altogether, Jia is said to have trimmed approximately six minutes from the original version that screened in Cannes.

Although the cuts of Feng have caught attention, it's not particularly uncommon for auteurs to rework festival films prior to their commercial opening, given that they often have to edit in a rush to meet the early submission deadlines for events like Cannes. Still, Feng's removal is conspicuous given his extreme fame and fan appeal in China. At Cannes, for example, he appeared on the poster for Ash Is the Purest White as though he had a major role rather than just a cameo. The two filmmakers are also known to be allies: Feng's latest hit as a director, Youth (2017), opened an indie film festival founded by Jia in rural China last year (Fan also served as the event's official star ambassador).

When asked directly at a press conference on Sunday about the excision of Feng from Ash Is the Purest White, Jia was cryptic, if not evasive. "When I was writing this script, I kept coming back to one line: 'It's hard to explain in a few words, and it arouses complex feelings.' This is the feeling I was going for in the film, and this is how I am feeling right now." He then moved on without further elaboration.

Ash Is the Purest White traces the tortured romance of young rural woman (played by Jia's wife and muse, Zhao Tao) and a low-level gangster (Liao Fan) during 18 years of dizzying change and development in China. Like much of the work that has made Jia an international arthouse star, the film has been noted for its nuance and contemplative tone.

Fan and Feng have been linked at the heart of China's tax evasion scandal since it exploded into public view in late May, when former state television anchor Cui Yongyuan posted documents to social media that appeared to be two acting contracts for the upcoming film Cell Phone 2, the sequel to a hit Feng film starring Fan from 2003. The materials were said to lay bare the common, but thoroughly illegal, practice of "yin-yang contracting," whereby production companies provide actors with two sets of pay contracts: one small one to submit to the tax authorities, and a second revealing the star's much larger real paycheck. Although the names were redacted, the leaked docs purportedly showed that Fan was claiming $1.56 million (RMB10 million) for four days of work on Cell Phone 2, when her true pay actually totaled an additional $7.8 million (RMB 50 million).

The revelations and the social media frenzy that followed prompted China's State Administration of Taxation to announce a broad inquiry into the entertainment industry, followed by an ominous warning: “If violations of tax laws and regulations are found, they will be handled in strict accordance with the law.”

The stock of leading Chinese film studio Huayi Brothers Media, which produced Cell Phone and was backing its planned sequel, promptly plummeted (its shares have yet to fully recover). Perhaps non-coincidentally, given the apparent preemptive removal of Feng, Huayi Brothers also is the lead distributor of Ash is the Purest White.

Representatives for Fan strongly denied any wrongdoing, but she soon stopped posting on social media platform Weibo, where she has over 60 million followers, and she hasn't been seen in public since. Her disappearance has sparked wild rumors, ranging from claims that she's been imprisoned or is under house arrest somewhere in China, and even one media report claiming that she was spotted in Los Angeles seeking asylum in the United States.

Many of Fan's fans, however, believe she was simply an unlucky victim felled in the crossfire between Cui and his true target, Feng. For over a decade, Cui has accused Feng and Huayi Brothers of slander, claiming that the plot of Cell Phone was loosely based on his life but took liberties that damaged his reputation. The film follows the travails of a prominent television anchor who carries on an extramarital affair with his assistant, played by Fan. It won numerous awards in China and became a commercial sensation. The sequel, naturally, is now in doubt.

[GeneChing]

SEPTEMBER 17, 2018 9:17PM PT
Feng Xiaogang Cut From ‘Ash Is Purest White’ as Fan Bingbing Scandal Spreads
By PATRICK FRATER
Asia Bureau Chief

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/fan-bingbing-cannes-2018-rex.jpg?w=1000&h=563&crop=1
CREDIT: ALBERTOTERENGHI/CANNES/IPA/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK

Chinese auteur Jia Zhangke’s drama “Ash is Purest White” will get its theatrical release this Friday in China – but with cuts that may reflect the sensitivity of the current political-cultural climate in the Middle Kingdom.

The film, which follows the turbulent lives of a gangster couple over a 17-year period, was screened at the Toronto Film Festival last week in a version that was six minutes shorter than the version that played in competition at the Cannes Film Festival in May. The new version was labeled as a director’s cut.

“This is a normal process which improves the flow of the narrative,” a spokesman for MK2 Films, the movie’s French co-investor and international sales agent, told Variety. “It is always a rush to prepare a film for Cannes. And [Jia] did the same thing with ‘Mountains May Depart’” from 2015.

But Chinese media reported that the edits specifically remove the cameo appearances of Feng Xiaogang, the high-profile film director who is embroiled in the scandal and rumor mill surrounding celebrity actress Fan Bingbing. Fan has been accused of hiding part of her income from an appearance in Feng’s upcoming film “Cell Phone 2.” Fan and Feng have both denied accusations of tax dodging.

In 2017, Fan attended the launch party in Cannes for Jia’s new Pingyao film festival. This year she walked the Cannes red carpet for the world premiere of “Ash.” Her disappearance from public view since late July has fueled suggestions that she is being detained by authorities against her will.

At a public screening of “Ash” in Beijing on Sunday, Jia dodged questions about cutting out Feng. “It is complicated,” he said onstage, according to reports by Chinese website Mtime.

Jia is China’s highest-profile art-house director. He has made a career of chronicling the changes in Chinese society wrought by the country’s breakneck modernization. That has made him a darling of overseas festivals – Toronto’s Platform section was named after Jia’s 2000 film of the same title – and a recurring pain for Chinese authorities.

While Jia’s first four features were considered underground works, more recently he has received partial financial backing and local release through state-owned companies including the Shanghai Film Group. His films are considered auteur works and reach much smaller audiences than those of Feng, but Jia has successfully steered a course between social critique and outright antagonism of authorities who would prefer to present a rosier picture.

Even so, his recent films have depicted the effects of the massive Three Gorges infrastructure project, collusion between crooked businessmen and civil servants, and the alienating impact of working in the Chinese mega-factories that make iPhones.

“Ash” is by far his biggest film in terms of budget, with much of it spent on painstaking recreations of sets and costumes that were current less than two decades ago but which are now obsolete.

It just occurred to me that some of you might not really know Fan Bingbing beyond her Hollywood flower vase roles like X-Men: Days of Future Past (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?67218-X-Men-Days-of-Future-Past) and Iron Man 3 (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?63555-Iron-Man-3). Perhaps I'll make a list of films of hers that we've discussed previously later. It's a little tricky because there's another major star, Li Bingbing, so if you search Bingbing on our forum, it coughs up some 70+ threads. Like I always say 'know your bingbings'.

[GeneChing]

There's a vid behind the link.


Fan Bingbing's disappearance shows no one is safe from Beijing (https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/25/asia/fan-bingbing-china-opinion-intl/index.html)
By Michael Caster

Updated 2:19 AM ET, Tue September 25, 2018
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA - MAY 16: Fan Bingbing and Hugh Jackman arrive at the Australian premiere of 'X-Men: Days of Future Past" on May 16, 2014 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images)

Michael Caster is a human rights advocate, researcher, civil society consultant and the editor of "The Peoples Republic of the Disappeared: Stories from inside China's system for enforced disappearances." The views expressed in this commentary are his.

(CNN)We know that China often disappears and abuses human rights defenders but when it can disappear even one of its most famous celebrities, the threat of enforced disappearance looms over anyone China claims within its jurisdiction.

Fan Bingbing, one of China's most famous actresses, known internationally for films such as "X-Men: Days of Future Past", has not been seen in public since June.
Though the details of her disappearance remain unknown, it seems most likely that Fan Bingbing is now the highest profile victim of China's newest system for enforced disappearances, known as liuzhi, under the powerful National Supervision Commission (NSC) established by the Chinese Communist Party in early 2018.
In November 2017, in response to a CNN request for comment on the country's justice system, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded China was a country "with a rule of law."
"Chinese judicial authorities fully guarantee all legal rights of criminal suspects when handling their cases. We hope foreign media outlets based in China respect China's judicial sovereignty, respect facts, and cover the news objectively and fairly," the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said at the time.
No one is safe
Fan Bingbing had been at the heart of an unfolding tax scandal since May when former state media CCTV presenter Cui Yongyuan accused her of large-scale tax evasion.
Following the corruption allegations, the State Administration of Taxation opened an investigation and, as is becoming increasingly common in China, not long after she stopped appearing in public.
No official word has been given about her disappearance yet, nor have any charges been announced by Chinese authorities.
Her disappearance, should be seen within the broader context of the ever-expanding use of enforced disappearances under Xi Jinping, and the newly-formed National Supervision Commission.
In another emblematic case, journalist Chen Jieren was disappeared for actually alleging corruption.
In July, he published two articles on his personal blog claiming corruption by Hunan party officials. A few days later, Chen, his wife and two brothers were taken away -- when his lawyer tried to visit him he was informed that Chen was being held by the National Supervision Commission and had no right to legal counsel.
Following a month in secret detention, in mid-August state media published his forced confession, while he remained incommunicado. Chinese state media attacked Chen as an "internet pest."
Although it may be unlikely for such high-profile cases as Fan Bingbing, once disappeared the risk of abuse and torture for those in custody is high.
Chen Yong was a former driver for a local Fujian party official, Lin Qiang, who himself was under investigation for corruption by the NSC. Chen first disappeared from his home in early April.
After nearly a month without contact, his family was summoned with the news that Chen was dead, according to RSDL Monitor. The authorities claimed that the healthy 45-year-old had simply collapsed during interrogation.
His wife's request to view the interrogation video was refused. Chen's was the first apparent death inside liuzhi.
Enforced disappearances expanded
In my book "The People's Republic of the Disappeared" I argued that through the 2013 Criminal Procedure Law China has tried to create a legal basis for secret detentions.
Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location (RSDL) allows the police to detain someone in secret for upwards of six months, mainly for so-called national security crimes.
But, while it has been used widely against human rights defenders, the law itself has a limited target group.
In early 2018, China created the National Supervision Commission, ostensibly focused on investigating corruption with liuzhi, its own custodial control mechanism, which provides the state with similar powers to disappear suspects but on an expanded scale.
The disappeared: Accounts from inside China's secret prisons
The disappeared: Accounts from inside China's secret prisons
The NSC is a broader version of the anti-corruption body, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), which was responsible for the highly-secretive Shuanggui system and was known for serious human rights abuses as outlined in a 2016 report by Human Rights Watch.
The CCDI handled some 734,000 investigations in 2016, and now under the NSC, with its expanded scope, disappearances and other abuses are likely to increase.
Under the new laws, these sweeping anti-corruption bodies have jurisdiction not only over China's roughly 90 million Communist Party members, but also over a potentially unlimited target group including nearly any government staff, managers at state-owned enterprises, and really anyone if they are deemed relevant to a case of Party concern.
The crimes might include, as with Fan Bingbing, large scale tax evasion or tragically, as with Chen Yong, if you are only wanted in relation to another investigation.
According to Liu Jianchao, head of the Zhejiang supervision commission, those swept up into Liuzhi are typically kept for 42.5 days before being transferred. Although someone can be kept for up to six months, a lot can happen in forty plus days of disappearance.
The creation of the NSC and Liuzhi is another clear example of China's flagrant disregard for international human rights protections, and part of Xi Jinping's attempt to systematize gross human rights abuses, from enforced disappearance to torture, behind the veneer of the rule of law.
This should concern everyone.
That China feels so emboldened to disappear even one of its most famous actresses, likely within the Liuzhi system, should be a real wake up call that anyone within China could be next, and as I have argued elsewhere this doesn't stop with Chinese citizens.

[GeneChing]

Wow. That's a lot of money.

There's an embedded vid on CNN's site.

Fan Bingbing: China says missing actress fined for tax evasion (https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/02/entertainment/china-fan-bingbing-tax-intl/index.html)
Steven Jiang CNN Digital Expansion 2017. James Griffiths
By Steven Jiang and James Griffiths, CNN

Updated 10:56 AM ET, Wed October 3, 2018
Missing Chinese actress resurfaces owing $130M

Beijing (CNN)Chinese actress Fan Bingbing has been fined for tax evasion, state media reported Wednesday, the first public pronouncement about the star since she mysteriously disappeared from public view in June.

According to state-run news agency Xinhua, Fan has been ordered to pay almost $130 million, after she misreported how much money she had received for certain film projects, using so-called "yin-yang contracts" to conceal from the authorities her true remuneration and avoid millions of dollars in taxes.
Fan and companies related to her were ordered to pay around $42 million in late taxes and fees, along with a fine of $86 million. Because she was a first-time offender, the government said criminal charges would not be filed against her if she pays all the money by an undisclosed deadline, Xinhua reported.
Fan's disappearance from public view sparked widespread speculation she had been detained by the authorities. Xinhua said she had been under investigation by tax authorities in Jiangsu province, near Shanghai but didn't provide any details on her current whereabouts.
In a letter posted on social media, Fan, 37, apologized profusely and repeatedly to the public and government.
"As a public figure, I should have abided by laws and regulations, and been a role model in the industry and society," she said. "I shouldn't have lost self-restraint or become lax in managing (my companies), which led to the violation of laws, in the name of economic interests."
Fan admitted to signing the contracts and said she "completely accepts" the decision by tax authorities.
"Without the favorable polices of the Communist Party and state, without the love of the people, there would have been no Fan Bingbing," she added.
Her case was clearly designed as a warning to other high profile celebrities, with the State Administration of Taxation saying it had launched a campaign to recover all back taxes in the entertainment industry.
Those who do not meet a December 31 deadline could face criminal charges, the authority said.

Disappeared

Fan has not been seen since June, a month after Cui Yongyuan, a former presenter for state-broadcaster CCTV, accused her of large-scale tax evasion.
The disappearance of one of China's most famous and most bankable stars shocked many in the entertainment industry, which had previously largely avoided Chinese President Xi Jinping's ongoing anti-corruption crackdown.
Under the National Supervision Commission, created in 2018, sweeping investigatory powers which had previously applied only to members of the ruling Communist Party were expanded to cover broad swaths of Chinese society.
"That China feels so emboldened to disappear even one of its most famous actresses ... should be a real wake up call that anyone within China could be next," human rights advocate Michael Caster wrote for CNN last month.
"Yin-yang contracts" are considered a form of tax evasion where the first, smaller contract is reported to authorities while the second, larger one is treated as tax-free income.
According to Xinhua, the investigation of Fan was sparked by her reporting of income from "Air Strike," an upcoming Chinese film starring Liu Ye and Bruce Willis about the Japanese bombings of Chongqing during World War II.
Separately from Fan, officials said her agent, Mou Enguang, obstructed the investigation, and ordered employees of companies owned by Fan and himself to conceal or destroy accounting evidence. Mou is now being detained by police as the investigation of his case continues.
Officials at several local tax bureaus in Jiangsu have also been held responsible for Fan's tax evasion.

[GeneChing]

Make an example of one of your top stars and the others will follow.


OCTOBER 4, 2018 3:18AM PT
Chinese Stars Rush to Pay Taxes in Biz Crackdown (https://variety.com/2018/film/asia/chinese-stars-make-tax-payments-in-biz-crack-down-1202968474/)
By VIVIENNE CHOW

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/fan-bingbing.jpg?w=1000&h=563&crop=1
CREDIT: ALVARO BARRIENTOS/AP/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK

Hong Kong pop queen Faye Wong, mainland Chinese actress Zhao Wei and Taiwan’s Shu Qi are believed to be among the celebrities from around greater China who are now rushing to ensure their finances are on the right side of the law in the Middle Kingdom.

Their haste has been triggered by the recently announced punishment of superstar Fan Bingbing for tax evasion, and by the Chinese government’s campaign to make public examples of misbehaving celebrities.

Tax officials Wednesday revealed that Fan, star of Hollywood’s “X-Men: Days of Future Past” and recent Chinese hit “I Am Not Madame Bovary,” could be liable for up to $129 million (RMB 883 million) in back taxes, late payment penalties and fines.

The hefty penalty imposed on China’s most famous actress – who was reportedly detained and questioned by authorities for months – signals the beginning of an aggressive crackdown on the country’s booming entertainment business, as celebrities have been warned to sort out their unpaid taxes by the end of this year. State news agency Xinhua reported that entertainment companies and workers who pay their taxes by Dec. 31, 2018, will not be penalized. Those who do not face legal consequences.

Chinese media reported that authorities are especially targeting 200 celebrities who are paid more than $1.5 million (RMB 10 million) for each acting job. The names are believed to derive from a list compiled by talk show host Cui Yongyuan, who earlier this year exposed the “yin-yang contracts” – two different contracts for the same job, only one to be submitted to tax officials – that Fan allegedly signed for appearing in Feng Xiaogang’s “Cell Phone 2.”

That revelation triggered the official investigation into Fan and the wider industry. Cui said in July that he had compiled a list of 585 actors and crew members who worked on Huayi Brothers projects and that he had handed the file to tax authorities. “We believe that they are all involved in tax evasion,” he wrote on microblogging site Weibo.

The names of celebrities suspected to be on the list have been widely circulated in the Chinese media, including some Taiwanese actors such as Eddie Peng and Wallace Huo.

Authorities are also investigating stars who might have breached official caps on performers’ pay. Guidelines on salary limits were issued in September of last year, but have not been strictly enforced. Two months ago, however, dozens of leading Chinese television producers signed an agreement to limit actors’ fees. Performers can earn up to $145,000 (RMB 1 million) per episode, with a limit of $7.25 million (RMB 50 million) per season.

Chinese media have reported that pop queen Wong, Zhao and Shu have been paid more than the allowed maximum for their appearance on reality TV shows. Reports say that the three stars must each return between $7.25 million (RMB 50 million) and $13 million (RMB90 million) of their salaries to meet the requirement. The performers’ representatives could not be reached for comment.

[GeneChing]

What happens next for Fan? Despite the heavy penalty, it catapulted her into the global spotlight. Maybe she can procure a Hollywood role that's more than just a flower vase next?


OCTOBER 4, 2018 12:29AM PT
Chinese Actress Fan Bingbing Free After Detention (Report) (https://variety.com/2018/film/news/fan-bingbing-free-detention-report-1202968428/)
By PATRICK FRATER
Asia Bureau Chief

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/fan.jpg?w=1000&h=563&crop=1
CREDIT: MATT BARON/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK

Chinese superstar Fan Bingbing, who has been at the center of a storm over unpaid taxes, is said to be at liberty after a period of government detention.

Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, citing unnamed sources, reported Thursday that Fan has returned to Beijing after an unspecified period of “residential detention.” The paper said that Fan had been held at a “holiday resort” near Wuxi, in Jiangsu province, that has been previously used to interrogate errant Communist Party officials.

Fan disappeared from public view in June and from social media at the beginning of July after being accused of tax fraud by a fellow celebrity. He used social media to publish copies of two contracts that he alleged were evidence of tax evasion by Fan.

On Wednesday, China’s tax authorities announced that she would have to pay hundreds of millions of yuan in back taxes, fines and other penalties. State news agency Xinhua suggested that Fan and her companies could be liable for a staggering $129 million (RMB 883 million).

Fan herself then re-emerged on social media to make an abject apology. “I feel ashamed and guilty for what I did, and here, I offer my sincere apology to everyone,” she wrote on micro-blogging site Weibo.

Despite the immensity of the sums involved, Fan is expected to be able to avoid criminal prosecution if she pays up promptly.

“I feel ashamed that I committed tax evasion in [upcoming film] ‘Unbreakable Spirit’ and other projects by taking advantage of ‘split contracts.’ Throughout these days of my cooperation with the taxation authorities’ investigation of my accounts as well as my company’s, I have realized that, as a public figure, I should’ve observed the law, setting a good example for society and the industry,” Fan wrote.

[GeneChing]

The next question in my mind is 'What will be her next film?' I suspect it'll be something very nationalistic, but given the publicity she got out of this in the U.S., it might be parlayed into a significant Hollywood role - that would be very delicate however...unless she defected. :eek:


OCTOBER 3, 2018 4:22AM PT
Fan Bingbing Apologizes for Tax Evasion: ‘I Feel Ashamed and Guilty for What I Did’ (https://variety.com/2018/film/news/fan-bingbing-apology-ashamed-and-guilty-for-what-i-did-1202966828/)
By HENRY CHU and VIVIENNE CHOW

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/9665146ez-e1538576432168.jpg?w=1000&h=563&crop=1
Fan Bingbing 'Everybody Knows' premiere and opening ceremony, 71st Cannes Film Festival, France - 08 May 2018
CREDIT: ANTHONY HARVEY/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK

Hit with monumental fines for tax evasion, Chinese actress Fan Bingbing made a fulsome apology Wednesday, saying she felt “ashamed and guilty for what I did.”

It was her first public statement after months of silence on her Weibo social media account and after fevered speculation over her disappearance from view. Fans and industry observers have wondered whether Fan, China’s highest-paid actress, had been put under house arrest by Chinese authorities, or even imprisoned and interrogated under duress.

Although she has still yet to be seen in public, Fan said she accepted responsibility for having “lost my ability to govern myself in the face of economic interests, leading myself to break the law.” She said she had “endured an unprecedented amount of pain, undergoing deep self-reflection and introspection….I beg for everyone’s forgiveness!” (Full apology below.)

She credited China’s ruling Communist Party and her fans for her success as an actress. She and her companies now face as much as RMB 883 million ($129 million) in back taxes and fines. Fan said she would pay the penalties and vowed in future to “uphold the law and respect orders.”

Her punishment comes as the Chinese government steps up its campaign to ensure that all citizens toe the party line, which demands adherence to “core socialist values” and frowns on ostentatious displays of wealth. Officials have also launched an investigation into the use of double contracts in the entertainment industry, where only the one of lower value is declared to tax authorities. Fan admitted to the practice.

Within hours, her apology had been re-posted more than 100,000 times and received nearly 500,000 “likes.” Fans generally agreed with the authorities but also declared their love and support for the actress.

“Respect the result, accept criticism. We still [heart emoji],” wrote one Weibo user.

“Humans are not saints. It is impossible for us to make no mistakes. Being able to correct your mistakes is the right thing to do,” another user wrote.

Read Fan’s apology in full, translated from Chinese:


Letter of Apology

Recently I have endured an unprecedented amount of pain, undergoing deep self-reflection and introspection. I feel ashamed and guilty for what I did, and here, I offer my sincere apology to everyone.

For a long period of time, I did not uphold the responsibility of safeguarding the interests of my country and our society against my personal interests. I feel ashamed that I committed tax evasion in “Unbreakable Spirit” and other projects by taking advantage of “split contracts.” Throughout these days of my cooperation with the taxation authorities’ investigation of my accounts as well as my company’s, I have realized that, as a public figure, I should’ve observed the law, setting a good example for society and the industry. I shouldn’t have lost my ability to govern myself in the face of economic interests, leading myself to break the law. Here I sincerely apologize to society, friends who care about me, the public and the taxation authorities.


I completely accept the penalties given by the taxation authorities after their thorough investigation. I will follow the final order given by the taxation authorities and will do my best to raise funds to pay back the taxes and fines.

I have been an art lover since I was a child, and I’m also fortunate to have run into the rise of the film and television industries. Thanks to guidance from veterans as well as love from the audience, together with my own hard work, I have achieved a bit of success in my career. As an actor, I take pride in showcasing our country’s culture on the global stage, and I do my best to be in the forefront of this. My success owes to the support from my country and the people. Without the great policies of the [Communist] Party and the country, without the love of the people, there would be no Fan Bingbing.

Today I’m facing enormous fears and worries over the mistakes I made! I have failed the country, society’s support and trust, and the love of my devoted fans! I offer my sincere apology here once again! I beg for everyone’s forgiveness!

I believe that, after this incident, I will uphold the law and respect orders, as well as taking my responsibilities. While I will continue to produce great work for everyone, I will keep a close eye on my company’s management to ensure that my company abides by the law, building it into a great company that is cultured and has high integrity, in order to spread positive energy to society!

Again, I apologize to society and my devoted fans, as well as to my friends and family who care about me. I sincerely say: I am sorry!

Fan Bingbing
October 3 2018

[GeneChing]

The humbling of Fan Bingbing is a warning shot from China to anyone who thinks they can defy them (https://www.businessinsider.com/fan-bingbing-china-warning-shot-2018-10)
Alexandra Ma Oct. 7, 2018, 2:46 AM

https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5b63180489c8a186588b469a-1136-568.jpg
Fan Bingbing disappeared for three months and broke her silence this week with a groveling apology to China. Andreas Rentz/Getty

Prominent Chinese actress Fan Bingbing disappeared for three months amid tax evasion allegations, and broke her silence earlier this week to confess and apologize.

Roderic Wye, a former British diplomat in Beijing, said Fan's humbling was a powerful warning from China that "nobody can escape government scrutiny."
He added that high-profile disappearances are "often a sign that someone has got into trouble" in Chinese politics.

Fan's career can still be revived, he said.

Fan Bingbing, one of China's most famous actresses, mysteriously disappeared for three months after being accused of tax evasion. On Wednesday she broke her silence, offering a simpering apology to Beijing and swearing to change her ways.

Her fall from grace serves as a powerful warning shot from China to show that nobody can escape their scrutiny.

Tax authorities in China's Jiangsu province on Sunday found that the 37-year-old actress and her companies evaded 248 million yuan ($34 million/£28 million) in taxes, but gave no further details on the companies or this figure.

The state-run Xinhua News agency, a prominent mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party, reported that tax authorities fined the star $129 million in unpaid tax and fines, citing government tax officials.

Almost straight afterward, they ran a separate story entitled: "Fan Bingbing's case is a warning to the literary and entertainment industries to follow the law."

https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5bb4c81b9a4ab82d75605ea4-960-480.jpg
Fan was accused of evading $34 million in taxes. Andreas Rentz/Getty

"Nobody is too high" for the Chinese government

Roderic Wye, an associate fellow at Chatham House and former first secretary in the British Embassy in Beijing, said that Fan is being made an example of, to prove that the state can come for anybody.

China is grappling with tax evasion cases both within and beyond the entertainment industry, and Fan's disappearance and punishment shows Beijing's eagerness to crack down.

China's message is that "nobody is too high, nobody is above, nobody can escape government scrutiny," Wye told Business Insider.

He said that Fan's humbling is "partly a periodic [drive] to crack down on high-level earners, but more importantly it's part and parcel of the [national campaign] for a new, modest patriot serving the national cause, instead of private gain."

"That's one of the messages put across by the [Communist Party] and it helps to have a high-profile example like Fan Bingbing, who people know," he said.

Wye added that public disappearances such as Fan's was not unusual, especially in politics.

"It is often a sign that someone has got into trouble if they fail to appear in public doing their normal duties for a period of time in," the former diplomat said.

https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5b6ac8a02154a332008b4c1d-960-480.jpg
Public disappearances are not unusual in Chinese politics. Here, President Xi Jinping makes a toast at a banquet in Beijing in May 2017. Reuters

Will Fan's humbling work?

Wye said that Fan's case would likely scare other people in the entertainment industry into making sure they file their taxes properly, but said it was unlikely to tackle the problem entirely.

"High earners in the entertainment industry and [beyond], I suspect, would be looking to their tax returns and make sure they conduct themselves fully in accordance with China's message," Wye said, which says that "people should be properly respectful of the law and properly respectful of the new morality in China."

But he added: "Tax evasion happens all the time, and if China becomes richer and richer, and more and more money sloshes around the system, there will be more and more opportunities for people and businesses to divert it into non-government-approved channels.

"I think it is inevitable under those circumstances that there will be examples of tax evasion and examples of corruption in the government."

"I don't see this [Fan's punishment] as a revenue raising measure, but more of a political social measure to ensure conformity with a behavior of norms that the government wants people to follow," he added.

https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5b6369ae5c5e521f008b4c9b-960-480.jpg
Fan’s fall from grace is a warning shot from China to show that nobody can escape their scrutiny. Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images

Fan's financial punishment was "determined by the people's will and hearts, and helps promote the healthy development of literature and art in the new era," the state news agency Xinhua reported earlier this week.

Such moralistic language is not uncommon in China, which relies on similar discourse to justify its policies and make sure nobody defies it.

The country ranks its citizens with a social credit system, which aims to reinforce the idea that "keeping trust is glorious and breaking trust is is disgraceful," according to a government document.

Fan is not the first prominent celebrity to be publicly humiliated and fined over tax evasion in China.

In 2002, actress Liu Xiaoqing was jailed for about a year and forced to pay 7.1 million yuan ($1 million/£790,000) after being charged with tax vasion, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported at the time.

She was accused of evading nearly 6.68 million yuan ($970,000/£750,000) in taxes from 1996 to 2001, Xinhua said.

After her imprisonment, Liu re-emerged in movies and TV shows in China, and even wrote a book about her time in jail, titled "Rise from the Ashes."

https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5bb4a6ee94750c29ee14fef3-960-480.jpg
Fan’s career could still be revived. Pascal Le Segretain/Getty

Fan's career could also be revived when her tax evasion nightmare is over. She could avoid criminal charges if she repays the money in time, Xinhua reported this week.

Australian vitamin brand Swisse, British diamond company De Beers, and French beauty company Guerlain stopped using Fan's face on their ad campaigns during her disappearance, the South China Morning Post reported.

"Maybe she will find work in Chinese films, and maybe international companies will still be willing to offer her jobs," Wye said. "I don't think it's necessarily the end of her career." Would this happen in the USA? Nah, we protect our tax evaders. :o

[GeneChing]

I'd say it's Fan's legs, but most of the publicity photos only focus on her face and her formal evening gowns.


OCTOBER 8, 2018 10:19AM PT
China Cracks Down on Entertainment Industry Taxes After Fan Bingbing Scandal (https://variety.com/2018/biz/news/china-tax-crackdown-fan-bingbing-1202972110/)
By VIVIENNE CHOW

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/fan-bingbing.jpg?w=1000&h=563&crop=1
CREDIT: INVISION/AP/SHUTTERSTOCK

China’s entertainment companies and top-earning celebrities have been warned to re-examine their taxes dating back to 2016 in light of the Fan Bingbing tax evasion scandal.

The State Administration of Taxation said in a statement released on Monday that beginning on Oct. 10, provincial tax authorities will inform local film and television production companies, talent management agencies, performance companies, studios of individual celebrities, as well as relevant companies and high-earning film and television industry practitioners about the re-examination of their tax returns submitted since 2016. Companies and related industry workers who discover and pay their unpaid taxes upon self-conducted inquiry of their previous tax returns by Dec. 31 will not be penalized, the statement said.

From January to the end of February 2019, tax authorities will target certain companies and industry workers to “further self-correct” their taxes based on their self-conducted re-examination results. Those who are warned to self-correct their taxes at this stage will be penalized, but the level of punishment will vary depending on the situation. Heavy penalties will be applied to those who fail to comply between March and June next year.

Authorities will review the current taxation policies applied on film and television industries and set up a new, effective system by the end of July 2019.

It emerged last week that Bingbing, China’s most famous actress who disappeared for 123 days when she was reportedly arrested, was accused of tax evasion after splitting contracts for her appearance in war epic “Unbreakable Spirit.” She was ordered to pay a total of $129 million (RMB880 million) in unpaid taxes, late payments, and penalties. The State Administration of Taxation also announced that five officials from the regional taxation office of Wuxi of the Jiangsu province, where Fan’s company is based, have been either fired or demoted.

The share price of Huayi Brothers, which produces “Cell Phone 2” and acquired the local rights to all-female action drama “355,” both starring Fan, plunged to a new low at $0.73 (RMB5.02) per share on the first trading day after China’s national holiday week, down more than 50% from its peak at $1.51 (RMB10.42) at the beginning of 2018.

[GeneChing]

The View by Mimi Zou
Fan Bingbing’s fall from grace turns the spotlight on the far-reaching yin-yang economy in China (https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/united-states/article/2167508/fan-bingbings-fall-grace-turns-spotlight-far)
Mimi Zou says separate contracts for official use and for execution by private parties are common in the construction industry and property transactions, and are even legitimised by the courts
PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 09 October, 2018, 10:04am
UPDATED : Tuesday, 09 October, 2018, 10:37pm
Mimi Zou

https://cdn1.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/980x551/public/images/methode/2018/10/09/d2591766-cadd-11e8-9460-2e07e264bd11_1280x720_094456.JPG?itok=nqMIfvmI

When Fan Bingbing “disappeared” in July, there was much speculation about what had happened to China’s highest-paid actress. She returned to the spotlight last Wednesday when Chinese authorities announced that she has been ordered to pay nearly 884 million yuan (US$129 million) in unpaid taxes, fines, and penalties for tax-related offences. Fan is the most high-profile personality to date to be subject to the Chinese government’s crackdowns on celebrities’ earnings and tax evasion practices.

Central to the authorities’ investigation is Fan’s use of “yin-yang contracts” to conceal her real earnings. The actor entered into two contracts for the same work: a “yang” (“in the light”) contract showing lower earnings for the tax authorities and a separate “yin” (“in the dark”) contract with a larger figure that is unreported. Such contracts have become quite prevalent in the Chinese entertainment industry to circumvent tax laws and, more recently, a policy capping television and film stars’ earnings to discourage “money worship” and “distortion of social values”.

The Fan Bingbing scandal unfolded in June, when a television presenter leaked on social media documents of two yin-yang contracts that were purportedly linked to Fan’s work in the film Air Strike. One contract was for 10 million yuan, another for 50 million yuan. At the time, Fan’s studio denied any wrongdoing by the actress. The TV presenter later withdrew the allegations and apologised to Fan, but the tax authorities had already launched their probe.

According to the State Administration of Taxation, Fan had earned 30 million yuan for her work on the film Air Strike but had only declared 10 million to the authorities, thus evading 6.18 million yuan in personal income tax. Fan and her company also owed 255 million yuan in unpaid taxes.

Beyond the entertainment industry, yin-yang contracts are found across a variety of sectors and transactions in China. For example, in construction projects, the yang contract is signed by the construction unit and the bid-winning contractor in accordance with Chinese Bidding Law and official bidding documents.

This contract is registered with the administrative department of the construction unit. Meanwhile, a yin contract is concluded between the parties in private, usually to avoid administrative supervision and management by the relevant government authorities. The yin contract spells out the actual execution of the project.

Such contracts are also common in property transactions. The yin contract indicates the real transaction price, while a yang contract stating a lower price is produced for the transfer of title registration to enable the parties to pay less capital gains and other taxes.

Another type of yang contract is one with a higher price that is submitted to the bank to apply for a bigger mortgage. The parties may also attempt to split the full transaction price into two contracts: one sales contract – which states a low sale price for the property – and a separate contract for refurbishments and furniture.

https://cdn4.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/images/methode/2018/10/09/eea7ee84-cadc-11e8-9460-2e07e264bd11_1320x770_094456.JPG
A man works on the construction site of a residential skyscraper in Shanghai in November 2016. Yin-yang contracts are commonplace in both the construction industry and property market. Photo: AFP

While the use of such contracts for tax evasion or other unlawful purposes attracts administrative and possibly criminal sanctions, are yin-yang contracts unenforceable per se if a dispute arises between the contracting parties? There is no easy answer.


Chinese courts have adopted a case-by-case approach to determining the validity of yin-yang contracts
Under Chinese contract law, a contract established according to law becomes effective at the time of its establishment. If relevant laws and administrative regulations require the approval or registration of a contract before it comes into effect, then those provisions apply. As a general principle, a valid agreement between the parties is the genuine expression of their intention. Thus, while the yang contract may be the registered official contract, the yin contract reflects the parties’ true intention.

Furthermore, the main Chinese contract law legislation lists several grounds on which a contract can be deemed void: contracts that appear legitimate on the surface but conceal an illegal purpose; contracts that violate mandatory provisions of laws and administrative regulations; and, contracts that harm social and public interests. On these grounds, Fan’s use of yin-yang contracts for tax evasion renders both contracts void.

In judicial practice, Chinese courts have adopted a case-by-case approach to determining the validity of yin-yang contracts. For example, if the difference in the value of the two contracts is small, courts tend to recognise the validity of either. Sometimes, courts may determine the price clause to be invalid while upholding the validity of the remaining contract.

https://cdn4.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/images/methode/2018/10/09/8d986e66-cae1-11e8-9460-2e07e264bd11_image_hires_094456.JPG

Fan’s fall from grace and the recent government crackdown on celebrities’ tax-dodging schemes have redirected our attention towards the ongoing problems of China’s yin-yang economy. In 2010, the Post called for the stamping out of rampant yin-yang contracts in property transactions, since these practices distort property prices and the market.

However, yin-yang contracts, which have become ubiquitous in many parts of the economy, will not disappear after the latest crackdown. One can only hope that the long-standing tacit tolerance of such practices by government authorities and courts will begin to change.

Mimi Zou is the inaugural Fangda Fellow in Chinese Commercial Law at Oxford University. She is the author of An Introduction to Chinese Contract Law

China’s yin-yang economy. I wish the U.S. had such a cute name for its tax evaders.

[Jimbo]

With all this going on (like China's detention of the head of Interpol), I wonder if Jackie Chan has anything to worry about regarding tax evasion (or the accusation of it)?

[GeneChing]

With all this going on (like China's detention of the head of Interpol), I wonder if Jackie Chan has anything to worry about regarding tax evasion (or the accusation of it)?

Jackie dodged that bullet early in this scandal (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70896-Where-in-the-world-is-Fan-Bingbing&p=1310394#post1310394). Taking him down would be really huge given his global status. Fan has global status too, but only in the international film festivals, not on the pop level like Jackie, not yet.

[GeneChing]

I could've sworn I started a 355 (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71005-355) thread here before. Well, here it is now, fallout from the Fan Bingbing scandal. (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70896-Where-in-the-world-is-Fan-Bingbing)


OCTOBER 10, 2018 1:00AM PT
Fan Bingbing May Have Been Found, but ‘355’ Still Needs to Locate a Star (https://variety.com/2018/film/asia/actress-fan-bingbing-tax-evasion-1202974463/)
By MATT DONNELLY
Senior Film Writer
@MattDonnelly

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/fan-bingbing1.jpg?w=1000&h=562&crop=1
CREDIT: JOEL C RYAN/INVISION/AP/REX/SHUT

“Kill the chicken to scare the monkeys,” goes an old Chinese proverb about making an example of an individual to rattle the many.

Embattled Chinese actress and global celebrity Fan Bingbing, who last week admitted to running afoul of her government and evading millions of dollars in taxes, is “absolutely” being made an example of, Hollywood insiders and regional experts who spoke to Variety say.

After becoming the subject of wild conspiracy theories over her well-being before resurfacing Oct. 3 in a state of deep contrition, Fan is also likely to also face consequences in the very realm that could save her from financial ruin: show business.

Producers on her next gig, the international all-female action movie “355,” are prepared to fire and replace her should she not emerge from scandal in a manner that satisfies the government, film distributors and Chinese moviegoers, multiple individuals close to the project say. For now, the team is content to watch and wait, with production not expected to begin until spring of 2019.

Any decision would specifically be made to please Huayi Brothers, the entertainment company that paid a hefty $20 million in May for the rights to release “355” in mainland China when the deal was packaged out of the Cannes Film Festival.

While the film will also star Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong’o, Penélope Cruz and Marion Cotillard, a top Chinese star would be crucial for any mainland distributor to recoup such a high rights fee.

The state could also impose a media ban on Fan and force an acting hiatus, as it did in 2007 with Tang Wei, the breakout star of Ang Lee’s “Lust, Caution.” Tang was removed from all theatrical prints and advertisements for the film and did not work again for three years.

Representatives for “355” director Simon Kinberg and FilmNation, the movie’s sales agent, declined to comment for this story. A rep for Huayi Brothers did not respond to Variety’s request for comment.

A $130 million bill for unpaid taxes, late fees and fines, and an empty dance card are not Fan’s only woes. “The bigger issue for Huayi and other producers is how uncertain public reaction will be. The public is not sympathetic to those who have flouted the law,” Clayton Dube, director of the U.S.-China Institute at USC Annenberg, says of “355’s” commercial prospects in China. “She’s in a slightly different category, because she wasn’t taking public money,” Dube adds. “But she’s not contributing to the public purse. That’s still corruption.”

Fan was reportedly detained and grilled for months over secret contracts she’s said to have signed in parallel with the deals she officially reported to tax authorities regarding her film work. While fans wondered about her disappearance from public view, Chinese academics awarded her a shocking score of zero in an annual state-sanctioned report ranking the “social responsibility” of Chinese celebrities, presaging her spectacular fall from grace.

The media coverage labeled her toxic for the tens of millions of Chinese youths who obsessively follow her as an artist, fashion plate and ultimate influencer. While the social responsibility report likened her to the Chinese equivalent of a Kardashian sister, Fan’s brand is observably upmarket.


The bigger issue is how uncertain public reaction will be. The public is not sympathetic to those who have flouted the law.”
CLAYTON DUBE, U.S.-CHINA INSTITUTE, USC ANNENBERG

She’s been the face of campaigns for Louis Vuitton, jeweler De Beers, Adidas and luxury trinket maker Montblanc. That last company dropped her as a result of the tax scandal. More are expected to follow suit.

It’s not all bad news for Fan. Global agency CAA has no plans to drop her from its client lists as she works on mending fences, an individual close to the actress says. A CAA spokesperson declined to comment.

CAA does not rep Fan in China, but scouts global branding and acting opportunities for the star. The thinking inside the agency is that Fan will not face any criminal charge as long as she settles up with the government, and she still has plenty of support from her global fan base. CAA would also be shielded from any investigation as it takes no commission on her Chinese deals.

An important sign that the government does not wish to scrub Fan from the face of the Earth lies in her active account on Chinese social media giant Sina Weibo, says Dube. “It’s striking to me that they didn’t pull the plug and close her account. They didn’t make her a nonperson,” he says.

Indeed, it was on Weibo that Fan made an abject apology for the entire mess. “I’m facing enormous fears and worries over the mistakes I made! I have failed the country, society’s support and trust, and the love of my devoted fans,” she wrote.

Fan will be preoccupied with being the sacrificial chicken for some time. As for the monkeys? There are nearly 200 well-paid actors now in the government’s crosshairs, reports say, based on the muckraking of a Chinese talk-show host named Cui Yongyuan.

Cui is credited with exposing Fan’s parallel contracts, known as “yin-yang” deals, and says he’s got a list of 585 actors and crew in China who engaged in similar practices. An industrywide investigation is under way.

[GeneChing]

There's a short vid


Chinese star Fan Bingbing seen in Beijing after lengthy disappearance (https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/17/asia/fan-bingbing-beijing-airport-intl/index.html)
By Ben Westcott, CNN
Updated 6:28 AM ET, Wed October 17, 2018
Fan Bingbing seen after lengthy disappearance

Hong Kong (CNN)Chinese film star Fan Bingbing has appeared in public for the first time since she vanished without a trace three months ago, sparking rumors that she had been disappeared by the Chinese Communist Party.

In a video posted by Baidu News and shared on Chinese social media site Weibo, Fan was shown leaving Beijing Capital International Airport on Monday night, wearing dark glasses to hide her face and followed by a man with a large black umbrella.
Despite her attempts to slip in under the radar, the 37-year-old actress was caught on camera by paparazzi photographers.
CNN has not been able to independently confirm the veracity of the photos.

https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/180915143407-fan-bingbing-exlarge-169.jpg
Actress Fan Bingbing attends the 2017 Time 100 Gala at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City.

Fan is among China's best known film stars, commanding million-dollar contracts for her performances in dozens of Chinese productions. She has also appeared in large international film franchises, such as X-Men.
But after allegations of tax avoidance by Fan were aired on Chinese social media in June, the high-profile actress disappeared from public life without a statement or explanation.

https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/181017135303-02-fan-bingbing-beijing-exlarge-169.jpg
Fan's disappearance caused speculation she had been detained by the Chinese government.

Experts speculated she had been put into detention by the Chinese government while the tax allegations against her were investigated, a worrying development given her huge public profile and international standing.
"That China feels so emboldened to disappear even one of its most famous actresses ... should be a real wake up call that anyone within China could be next," human rights advocate Michael Caster wrote for CNN in September.

https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/181017135511-03-fan-bingbing-beijing-exlarge-169.jpg
Fan wore dark glasses and was followed and partially shielded by a man with a large black umbrella.

On October 2, the Chinese government announced Fan had been fined for tax evasion, using multiple contracts to hide large secret additional salaries for her performances.
Fan had to pay $130 million, according to the government, which included $42 million in late taxes and fees. Because she was a first-time offender, the government said there would be no criminal charges filed.
The actress posted an apology to her official social media accounts, saying she "completely accepts" the decision of the tax authorities.
"Without the favorable polices of the Communist Party and state, without the love of the people, there would have been no Fan Bingbing," she added.
Despite her apology and fine, the controversy appears to still be affecting movie projects involving Fan. There was speculation her latest film, "Air Strike," could be pulled in China after its director appeared to make a resigned statement on Weibo. The World War II film, produced by Mel Gibson, also stars Bruce Willis and Adrien Brody.
"It is time to put (it) down ... I have apologized to my main partner who has kept on supporting me, my distribution team who has been working hard, and viewers who have been anticipating the film," he said on his verified account.
CNN has not received official confirmation of whether "Air Strike" will be released in China.

We never started a thread on Air Strike. It didn't seem Kung Fooey enough. :rolleyes:

[GeneChing]

I wonder if we'll ever see it now.


Film Starring Fan Bingbing, Bruce Willis Canceled After Tax Case (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/fan-bingbing-film-canceled-1153283)
7:40 PM PDT 10/17/2018 by the Associated Press

https://cdn1.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/landscape_928x523/2018/10/fan_bingbing.jpg
George Pimentel/WireImage
Fan Bingbing

The director of Air Strike, featuring Chinese actress Fan Bingbing, says the film’s release has been canceled in the wake of her disappearance and conviction on tax evasion charges.

The World War II thriller, also starring Bruce Willis and Adrien Brody, was to have been released Oct. 26.

However, director Xiao Feng on Wednesday posted on his Weibo miniblog that it was “time to let go” after eight years of work on the film.

Chinese tax authorities this month ordered Fan and companies she represents to pay taxes and penalties totaling $130 million, ending speculation over the fate of one of the country’s highest-profile entertainers three months after she disappeared from public view.

State media said Fan evaded taxes by using two separate contracts for her work on Air Strike.

The actress has starred in dozens of movies and TV series in China and is best known internationally for her role as Blink in 2014′s X-Men: Days of Future Past, a cameo in the Chinese version of Iron Man 3 and for star turns on the red carpet at Cannes as recently as May.

Before her disappearance, she had been booked to star with Penelope Cruz in the Hollywood film 355.

Fan posted an apology on her official Weibo account, saying that she accepted the tax authorities’ decision and would “try my best to overcome all difficulties and raise funds to pay back taxes and fines.”

“I am unworthy of the trust of the society and let down the fans who love me,” she wrote in her first update of her Weibo.com microblog since June 2.

Fan’s disappearance coincided with a crackdown by Chinese authorities on high salaries for actors that can eat up much of the cost of a production. In June, regulators capped star pay at 40 percent of a TV show’s entire production budget and 70 percent of the total paid to all the actors in a film.

[GeneChing]

Well now, we do have a thread on Unbreakable Spirit (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70839-Unbreakable-Spirit):cool:

I'll copy this off our Where in the world is Fan Bingbing? (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70896-Where-in-the-world-is-Fan-Bingbing) thread to there too.

The bombing indeed. Apt title. :rolleyes:


OCTOBER 17, 2018 6:07AM PT
China Release of Fan Bingbing-Bruce Willis Film ‘Unbreakable Spirit’ Is Scrapped (https://variety.com/2018/film/asia/fan-bingbing-unbreakable-spirit-release-cancelled-1202982681/)
By VIVIENNE CHOW

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/bruce-willis-unbreakable-spirit.jpg?w=1000&h=562&crop=1
CREDIT: COURTESY OF CHINA FILM GROUP

The planned theatrical release of big-budget Chinese war movie “Unbreakable Spirit” has been scrapped following allegations of money laundering. The film had earlier been at the center of the tax avoidance allegations involving actress Fan Bingbing.

The film, previously known as “The Bombing,” was originally set for an August release. That was rescheduled to Oct. 26 after the Fan affair became major news. But Chinese media now report the release as canceled altogether.

Aside from Fan, the film has a stellar cast that includes Bruce Willis, Liu Ye, and Nicholas Tse. Director Xiao Feng said the film had taken eight years to make.

“It is time to let it go,” Xiao Feng wrote on social media. “My sincere apologies to my crew, the distribution team, and all audiences who had high expectations of the film.”

The film’s distributors, Beijing United Exhibition Partners, and Qi Tai Culture did not respond to Variety’s inquiries.

The decision comes a day after Cui Yongyuan, the TV host who sparked the Fan scandal by posting what he alleged were double contracts intended to defraud the tax authorities, said that the film’s budget had been artificially inflated.

The film’s executive producer Wang Ding has claimed that the film did not exceed its original estimated production budget of $21.7 million (RMB150 million). But other sources have estimated the budget at $90 million.

Cui alleges that vastly larger sums of Shanghai pension fund money were washed through the production. “[Unbreakable Spirit] had more than $432 million (RMB3 billion) coming from unidentifiable sources. During production, $245 million (RMB1.7 billion) was extracted through dirty tricks. This is why the director and crew are unable to clarify exactly how much money has been spent,” Cui wrote. “We must boycott the film.”

“Unbreakable Spirit” has a history of financial woes. One of the original investors, Hehe Film & Television, pulled out after its parent company, Kuailu, was caught up in a box-office fraud scandal surrounding “Ip Man 3” in March 2016. Shi Jianxiang, Kuailu’s former chairman and the original producer of “Unbreakable Spirit,” fled the country and is currently on China’s international wanted list. Beijing-based Yuanhua Pictures took on Hehe’s part and kept the production going.

[GeneChing]

The Fan Bingbing saga shows China’s willingness to control overly wealthy celebrities (https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/23/17991988/fan-bingbing-disappearance-reappearance-china-tax-evasion-social-media)
A comprehensive explainer of everything that’s happened so far
By Shannon Liao @Shannon_Liao Oct 23, 2018, 3:33pm EDT

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Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images

China’s highest-paid actress Fan Bingbing (X-Men: Days of Future Past) disappeared this summer following accusations of tax evasion. This month, an apology for breaking the law appeared on her social media account, and Fan has been ordered to pay 884 million yuan ($127 million) to avoid criminal prosecution. Last week, she resurfaced in paparazzi shots, but the Chinese release of her upcoming film Air Strike (also commonly translated as Unbreakable Spirit or The Big Bomb), also starring Bruce Willis, was canceled.

In the span of four months, one of the most famous and beloved women in China transformed into a symbol of corruption in a saga that captivated Chinese social media. So what happened?

It all began in May when TV presenter Cui Yongyuan posted screenshots on the social media service Weibo of what appeared to be Fan’s employment contract for an upcoming sequel to the very successful 2003 film Cell Phone. It stated she would earn 10 million yuan ($1.4 million), have two luxury cars and a daily food allowance of 1,500 yuan ($215). Cui used the caption, “Don’t bother acting, you really suck!”

The next day, he posted again, suggesting that Fan was being paid through two different contracts for the movie: one for 10 million yuan and another for 50 million yuan ($7.2 million). Only the first contract would be disclosed to tax authorities, while the second was kept secret so that Fan could avoid paying taxes on it, a common practice known as a “yin-yang contract.” He also stated that the actress only had to work for four days for the combined 60 million yuan.

Fan’s studio responded by threatening to sue Cui for libel. Bizarrely, Cui later apologized for attacking Fan and said in an interview with local media that the two contracts he shared had nothing to do with her, but rather a “gang” of other people who had been involved in drafting them. When Fan was fined in October, however, he encouraged people to boycott Air Strike. He was also able to pocket 100,000 yuan ($14,393) as a whistleblower’s fee for exposing Fan.

In June, Chinese tax authorities announced new rules for the film industry, curbing the ability of top actors like Fan to acquire immense wealth. Actors would no longer be allowed to earn more than 70 percent of the cast’s wages combined, or more than 40 percent of production costs. Although Fan wasn’t mentioned in the announcement, the tax authorities criticized the film industry for “fostering money worship” and allowing young people to “blindly chase celebrities.” The timing and the wording of the announcement indicated that Fan was being targeted because she had amassed too much wealth and influence.

Then in July, Fan vanished. A Chinese news report stated that authorities were investigating her and had barred her from leaving the country. That report was soon deleted, likely pulled by state censors. Social media posts questioning her disappearance were also removed. Despite the censorship, what happened to Fan became a hot topic in China and online; her name was the number one search result on the search engine Baidu the day after her sentence was declared.

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Baidu’s top news stories after tax authorities announce Fan Bingbing’s fines.

Over the past two years, Fan has endorsed 122 brands, including Louis Vuitton, Montblanc, Mercedes-Benz, and Cartier. But as her scandal continued, many of those companies began to distance themselves. Thai travel retailer King Power dropped Fan as its brand ambassador in September, and Australian vitamin brand Swisse stopped using Fan in promotional photos around the same time. Montblanc confirmed to The New York Times in September that it had terminated its contract with Fan. In August, prior to Air Strike’s Chinese cancellation, a new poster for the film appeared, excluding Fan. Although she isn’t blacklisted, Fan Bingbing is now a tainted name in China.

continued next post

[GeneChing]

WHY FAN BINGBING?
China’s film industry is riddled with yin-yang contracts, so why was Fan, in particular, targeted? The most obvious answer is her cultural and financial power; even the popularity of Chinese president Xi Jinping is dwarfed in stature by Fan’s stardom, and that’s precisely the problem.

In March, Xi abolished presidential term limits that would have ended his rule by 2022. The move signaled that China had ended its reform era, where a new leader would take power every 10 years and shape the country in a different way. Some have even compared Xi to Mao Zedong, who developed a personality cult and created the “paramount leader” style of rule, where he would still retain control even when he wasn’t officially the head honcho.


NETIZENS ENJOY MOCKING XI JINPING BY COMPARING HIM TO WINNIE THE POOH
But on social media, Xi doesn’t always fare so well. In fact, it’s the one place people can enjoy some level of free expression by mocking him. Although this mockery is heavily censored, the occasional meme slips through. So many people compared Xi to the portly bear Winnie the Pooh that the government ended up banning a Winnie the Pooh film from the country.

In contrast, social media posts about Fan — and her reputation — were overwhelmingly positive, prior to the tax-evasion scandal. They primarily focused on her beauty and her charity work. Since breaking into the film industry 15 years ago, Fan has become an icon. That’s dangerous to the government, and her gender only compounds the problem.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geY-MZ0v_ts

Fan once told Chinese reporters, “I don’t need to marry into a wealthy family. I am my own wealthy family.” It was a seemingly innocuous statement that could also be interpreted as subversive to the patriarchal state. The sense that a strong woman could be self-sufficient, not need a man, and even run this world, isn’t just a series of Beyoncé lyrics, but a real threat Beijing is taking seriously. As Jiayang Fan of The New Yorker puts it, a woman rising in power through wealth and fame is a real “existential terror” that the regime is facing.

Fan’s rags-to-riches success story has now become a communist morality tale about how the rich need to be shamed and punished for excess. Perhaps to drive this point home, the Beijing Normal University and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences produced survey results in September that found that only nine out of 100 television and film personalities were “socially responsible.” Judging celebrities on their professional work, charitable donations, and overall integrity, the researchers ignored Fan’s substantial charity work and gave her the lowest ranking out of all 100.

On October 3rd, Fan reappeared on Weibo with a “letter of apology.” It reads: “I shouldn’t have lost my ability to govern myself in the face of economic interests, leading myself to break the law,” and, more alarming, that “without the great policies of the [Communist] Party and the country, without the love of the people, there would be no Fan Bingbing.” The apology admits Fan committed tax evasion by signing yin-yang contracts for Air Strike. Even if we are to believe that she wrote that apology herself, it was almost certainly produced under coercive circumstances at the government’s behest.


Jiayang Fan
✔
@JiayangFan (https://twitter.com/JiayangFan/status/1039742768267051010?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5 Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1039742768267051010&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theverge.com%2F2018%2F10 %2F23%2F17991988%2Ffan-bingbing-disappearance-reappearance-china-tax-evasion-social-media)
In China,every time I mentioned Fan Bingbing's name, some local would feel compelled to say,"Ah, #1 beauty under the heavens!"（天下第一美女）As much as beauty is prized in China, suffice it to say, the greatest beauty in the world can't seduce the Party.https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-45426882 …

https://pbs.twimg.com/card_img/1054519455496187904/kiX_Q7aR?format=jpg&name=600x314

10:09 PM - Sep 11, 2018
Actress Fan Bingbing
Vanished China star gets 0% 'goodness' rating
Fan Bingbing, a film star not seen in more than two months, is ranked last in a report judging A-listers.

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On the same day Fan reappeared in public, Air Strike’s cancellation in China was announced in a brief post by the film’s director on Weibo. It was “time to let go” after eight years of working on it, he wrote. Now that Fan has resurfaced and apologized, it appears that the government has secured its ill-gotten victory. Other celebrities who have used yin-yang contracts to evade taxes have been given a grace period to pay up before December 31st and be exempt from punishment. Should Fan and the others not make the appropriate payments, their finances will be escalated to criminal cases handled by the police.

For more than a decade, Fan has been a strong, powerful woman adored by the public. Her demure apology and obeisance to Beijing is exactly what the government sought by singling her out: a return to the status quo that would put her in her place. Underneath the surface accusations of tax evasion and extravagant excess, there was another story unfolding: a subtle power struggle between China’s strong woman and its strongman leader. The latter appears to have won.

The next chapter will be - what does Fan Bingbing do next?

[GeneChing]

OCTOBER 27, 2018 9:12AM PT
Film Review: ‘Air Strike’ (https://variety.com/2018/film/reviews/air-strike-review-bruce-willis-fan-bingbing-1203005244/)
The myriad offscreen woes experienced by this controversial, expensive Chinese WW2 action epic overshadow the hectic, jumbled onscreen result.
By DENNIS HARVEY
Film Critic

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CREDIT: LIONSGATE

Director: Xiao Feng With: Bruce Willis, Ye Liu, Rumer Willis, Seung-Heon Song, William Chan, Wei Fan, Wu Gang, Ma Su, Yongli Che, Feng Yuangzheng, Geng Le, Ning Chang, Nicholas Tse, Fan Bingbing, Chen Daoming, Adrien Brody, Lei Jia, Simon Yam, Ray Lui, Shibuya Tenma, Hu Bing, Huang Haibing. (English, Mandarin, Japanese dialogue.) Release Date: Oct 26, 2018
Rated R 1 hour 36 minutes

Few films can claim a bumpier, more public production ride or worse crash landing than “Air Strike,” purportedly the most costly Chinese feature ever when it was shot — which was three years ago. Since then, it’s undergone several title changes, delays, and most cripplingly become part of a wide-ranging tax evasion scandal in which actress Fan Bingbing was convicted for financial fraud. As a result, the film’s Chinese release was canceled outright. In the U.S., Lionsgate scaled its primary distribution plans back to on demand, with subsidiary Grindstone handling a much-reduced theatrical launch. Oh, and a movie shot in 3D now appears to be showing nowhere in that format.

Of course, most viewers roped in by the promise of Bruce Willis in a WW2 combat movie (with Mel Gibson conspicuously listed as production “consultant”) will be oblivious to all that offscreen drama. What’s onscreen, however, is bound to make them suspect something went awry along the way. Eye-blink-brief appearances by prominently billed cast names are hardly the only truncated element in a hectic mishmash that reportedly ran five hours in an early cut, and now clocks in at just more than 90 minutes.

Conceived as an epic 70th-anniversary ode to “the Allied victory over fascism,” “Air Strike” retains elements of evident expanse and expense. Yet the final result is such a compromised jumble it’s hard to tell what its full original intentions might have been. Several main plot bones still stick out, however sawed-off, not to mention obscured by a barrage of barely contextualized spectacle. In one, U.S. military advisor Col. Jack Johnson (Willis) trains a squadron of Chinese pilots trying to fend off the Japanese invasion that started two years earlier in 1937. Seung-Heon Song, William Chan and Nicholas Tse play the chief flyboys he yells at between perilous missions.

Meanwhile, ex-pilot Xue Gangtou (Ye Liu) drives a military truck across treacherous terrain, carrying top-secret cargo. En route, he reluctantly acquires passengers including a teacher (Ma Su) and students whose school has been bombed; a resourceful but slippery possible spy (Gent Le); and a government scientist (Wu Gang) delivering specially bred piglets that might avert famine. At the same time, ordinary citizens in provisional capital Chongqing are under relentless attack by the Imperial Air Force — though somehow that doesn’t stop Fan Wei from presiding over a mahjong tournament that continues despite all adversity.

One suspects these strands were once meant to have a grand, interweaving old-school sweep under the direction of Xiao Feng (“Hushed Roar”). But “Air Strike” feels like a movie whose populist yet complicated narrative elements have been haphazardly pared to the nub, while the money shots — all things that go boom, as a great many do here — were left intact.

Unfortunately, they turn out to be more of a liability than a selling point. Though estimates of the film’s budget have ranged all over the map (from $22 million to three times that amount), the price tag was surely high enough to render surprising the shoddiness of the effects in myriad scenes of air combat and cities under fire. Such imagery’s video-game quality only trivializes scenes of mass destruction, which in turn often reach for a crude tear-jerking effect by throwing anonymous children in harm’s way.

The team-credited script piles on a Westernized series of popcorn action-flick perils, credulity-stretching stunts, and protagonists’ attempts to out-macho one another via fistfights and noble sacrifices. In the English-language version reviewed, awkward ESL dialogue clichés (one Chinese pilot earnestly entreats Willis with “Sir! Please allow us to go kick some ass!”) are not helped by the fact that individual actors sometimes seem to have been dubbed by multiple voices. (Willis gives a late pre-raid toast that sounds nothing like him.)

Other elements are less cluttered than simply arbitrary. If the “special appearances” by stars like Adrien Brody and Fan Bingbing are so abbreviated one wonders why they’re here at all, Rumer Willis has even less screen time — and third billing, nonetheless. The additions of comic relief and romantic interests could hardly feel any more inorganically stuck-on. An initially ubiquitous use of onscreen text to identify locations, characters, and even military equipment soon drops off to nothing. All this results in a film that is loud and busy, yet lacks any tonal consistency or narrative center — we’re never quite sure where whatever’s going on at present fits into an ill-defined bigger picture.

Yet certain aspects are polished and impressively scaled enough to suggest a movie that was perhaps never going to be inspired, but at least once had a coherent, ambitious scope. Many sequences on the ground involve imposing crowds and sets (Huaiqing Mao is the production designer), though they’re seldom glimpsed for long. The only thing here that doesn’t feel curtailed is the eight-minute closing credits crawl, no doubt featuring many names whose work is no longer much in evidence onscreen. (Evidence that “Air Strike” continues to suffer editorial indignities was provided this week by an online U.K. DVD review listing a runtime 20 minutes longer than the U.S. cut.)

In addition to Gibson’s ambiguous contribution (in some advance publicity he was curiously listed as the art director), there are also “consultant” credits for other luminaries, including late cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond. One assumes these are more honorary designations than evidence of real input, as despite some handsome aerial shots and a very wide aspect ratio, the overall look (beyond those sub-par effects) is pedestrian.

Veteran stunt coordinator Bruce Law is billed as “action director,” and the non-CG physicality is indeed splashy, yet of an ilk that would be more appropriate in a Jackie Chan caper than a WW2 epic based on real historical events. (Too many vehicles crash into too many buildings simply so we can see things get smashed.) One design contribution that is at least conventionally appropriate is Wang Liguang’s score, which is duly performed by the London Symphony Orchestra.

The starry Chinese cast, many among them barely utilized, works hard to dimensionalize roles that remain stubbornly, sometimes cartoonishly one-note. The three Americans each manage to be bad in entirely different ways: One local pilot’s snipe that “This Yank thinks he’s a hard-ass” pretty well sums up Willis Sr.’s Sgt. Rock-like turn, Brody sports the appalled, disheveled look of a man who has no idea what he’s doing here, and Ms. Willis makes an appearance so brief and irrelevant you might wonder why her role wasn’t edited out entirely.

Film Review: 'Air Strike'

Reviewed online, San Francisco, Oct. 26, 2018. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 96 MIN.

PRODUCTION: (China) A Grindstone Entertainment Group release (U.S.) of a Lionsgate Films, Grindstone Entertainment Group, China Film Co., Origin Films, Shanghai Nanchuo Co., Hollywood International Film Exchange presentation. Producers: Xiao Feng, Yang Buting, LA Peikang, Fu Jijun, Ren Zhonglun, Jiang Haiyang, Ling Hong, Li Hong. Executive producers: Wang Yianyun, Jiang Ping, Xiao Zhiyue, Zhao Haicheng, Yu Xingbao, Barry Brooker, Stan Wertlieb, Jimmy Jiang, Kimberly Kates.

CREW: Director: Xiao Feng. Screenplay: Chen Ping, Yang Hsin-Yu, Zhang Hongyi, Zhang Hongyi, Yushi Wu, Xiaoqi Li, Qiao Wa. Camera (color, widescreen, HD): Yang Shu. Editors: Chi-Leung Kwong, Robert A. Ferretti. Music: Wang Liguang.

WITH: Bruce Willis, Ye Liu, Rumer Willis, Seung-Heon Song, William Chan, Wei Fan, Wu Gang, Ma Su, Yongli Che, Feng Yuangzheng, Geng Le, Ning Chang, Nicholas Tse, Fan Bingbing, Chen Daoming, Adrien Brody, Lei Jia, Simon Yam, Ray Lui, Shibuya Tenma, Hu Bing, Huang Haibing. (English, Mandarin, Japanese dialogue.)

We definitely won't need an indie Air Strike review after this.

[GeneChing]

...someone else review it.


Fan Bingbing movie opens at last - in the US (https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/entertainment/fan-bingbing-movie-opens-at-last-in-the-us)
PUBLISHED OCT 29, 2018, 5:00 AM SGT
SHANGHAI • Actor Bruce Willis knew he was not in Hollywood anymore.

When his private jet landed in China three years ago for the shooting of Air Strike, the film crew did not have the money to pay the deposit for his hotel room.

The plot - behind the film, that is - only thickened.

The original producer fled the country after his business got caught up in a peer-to-peer lending scandal, leaving director Xiao Feng, who retold the story of Willis' hotel deposit on his blog, to tap his own savings to finish the film.

Then Fan Bingbing, one of the top Chinese stars in the movie, went missing after becoming embroiled in a tax-evasion scandal that shook the industry.

Despite all that drama, the movie opened in select theatres in the United States last Friday through a partner of distributor Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.

In China, it is unclear whether the most scandal-plagued film in recent memory will be able to capitalise on the publicity - even if it was negative. It was supposed to debut in China on Aug 17, but the release was then postponed to last Friday before it was pushed back indefinitely.

The movie's initial producer Shi Jianxiang had other problems as well.

In 2016, he seemed to hit pay dirt when Ip Man 3 (2015), a gongfu drama he backed starring Donnie Yen and Mike Tyson, had some success in theatres.

The problem was the movie's box-office figures were found to have been inflated, which led shares in companies affiliated with Mr Shi to crater.

Mr Shi also ran peer-to-peer lending operations under his Shanghai Kuailu Investment Group, which failed to pay investors. As scrutiny over that business intensified, he fled the country with Air Strike still in production.

Last month, prosecutors told a Shanghai court that Mr Shi's companies illegally raised more than 40 billion yuan (S$8 billion), according to the Shanghai government-run Xinmin Evening News.

Then there's the tax scandal surrounding Fan, one of China's highest-paid actresses.

Her woes began when a former talk-show host posted contracts on his social media feed that allegedly showed the actress had concealed some of her income.

Fan then disappeared from public view. After months of speculation in China, she reappeared only after the government said she had been found guilty of under-reporting income - including from Air Strike.

Tax authorities imposed one of the biggest fines in China's entertainment industry. Fan apologised publicly and agreed to cover her fines and back taxes.

It is unclear how the incidents involving Fan and Mr Shi would have affected the box office of Air Strike in China had it opened there as scheduled.

But one thing is certain: Chinese moviemakers will draw lessons from the film's scandals.

"China's film industry is still undergoing a rectification that will last well into 2019," said Dr Stanley Rosen, a University of Southern California political science professor who studies China.

[GeneChing]

If Fan plays her cards right, she could parlay this into an international career boost. She'd probably have to leave PRC to do that though.


Oct 31 2018 at 10:48 AM
Updated Oct 31 2018 at 4:07 PM
Swisse China sales jump despite ambassador Fan Bingbing tax strife (https://www.afr.com/business/health/swisse-china-sales-jump-despite-ambassador-fan-bingbing-tax-strife-20181030-h17bcs)

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One of China's most popular actresses Fan Bingbing, an ambassador for the Swisse brand, was in serious hot water with Chinese tax authorities. AP

by Simon Evans

The Swisse vitamins brand has shrugged off the tax scandal which enveloped one of its high-profile ambassadors in China, actress Fan Bingbing, with robust demand for its products lifting total revenues by 41 per cent in the three months ended September.

Swisse has also made solid headway in the Australian market, with the company saying its market share in vitamins and mineral supplements had increased to 18.9 per cent over the past year, up from 16 per cent as sales gathered pace in the big supermarket chains of Coles and Woolworths. Swisse is the major competitor to ASX-listed Blackmores.

The Swisse business has been owned for two years by Hong Kong-listed Health & Happiness International, which has just reported a fresh set of sales revenue figures to the market.

Health & Happiness chairman Luo Fei said the Swisse China business "continued to demonstrate vigorous growth through new product launches and the leverage of comprehensive branding and marketing campaigns and collaborations with new celebrities and key opinion leaders".

He didn't mention Fan, an ambassador for Swisse, who in early October resurfaced suddenly after China's tax authorities announced she had agreed to pay back almost 800 million yuan ($162 million) in fines and back taxes.

While she avoided going to prison, Fan was forced to issue a grovelling apology to her millions of fans on social media, saying "I'm so ashamed of what I've done".

Fan, China's most highly paid actors, had been missing since allegations she had avoided paying taxes triggered a government investigation three months ago. It has been unclear if she was detained by authorities or went into hiding voluntarily to escape public attention.

Mr Luo said two new product ranges, Swisse Ultinatal and Swisse Lifestyle, had been launched to capture momentum in two of the fastest-growing segments of the vitamins market.

Revenues in the adult nutrition and care products division, which is basically the Swisse business, climbed by 40.8 per cent to 1.26 billion yuan from 894.7 million yuan. In Australia, Swisse sales have been particularly strong in the supermarket channel, through Coles and Woolworths. Swisse Australasian sales director Nick Mann said new product lines in the grocery range along with extra promotions had helped spur strong growth in that segment, while the pharmacy market was also strong. "Sales in Chemist Warehouse continue to grow at double-digit pace," Mr Mann said.

For the nine months ended September 30, revenues from the Swisse business increased by 29.3 per cent. Mr Luo said the strong momentum was mainly achieved by the rapid growth in the China market, while the Australian market continued to "grow steadily". Swisse uses other ambassadors, including actress Nicole Kidman and former Test cricket captain Ricky Ponting.

Last week, Blackmores announced that shifts in the daigou market in Australia, where big retailers like Chemist Warehouse were doing deals directly with the entrepreneurs selling large volumes of vitamins on e-commerce sites in China, and a step up in advertising in Australia had helped its Australian business gain extra momentum.

The country's biggest vitamins company lifted revenues by 15 per cent to $154 million in the three months ended September 30, while net profit after tax increased by 7 per cent to $16.5 million, as chief executive Richard Henfrey said Australian sales were up by 19 per cent. Blackmores hired Chinese actor Shawn Dou as a new ambassador in China last week.

Health & Happiness in February 2017 acquired the remaining 17 per cent of Swisse that it didn't already own. It was the second step in a two-phase buyout for a total of $1.7 billion in late 2015 when demand for "clean and green" Australian vitamins soared and pushed rival firm Blackmores to a record share price on the ASX of $220 in January 2016. Blackmores shares are now at $123.

Health & Happiness in November, 2017 spent $131 million to regain full control of the brand in a buyout of a distribution deal struck in 2013 with two global giants, Procter and Gamble and Israel's Teva Pharmaceuticals for Asia and Europe in which it would have given up a large chunk of future profits in the booming China market from 2020.

[GeneChing]

Column by Nicolas Groffman
Top Gun was twice remade in Chinese, why didn’t anybody notice? Clue: PLA (https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2170552/top-gun-was-twice-remade-chinese-why-didnt-anybody-notice-clue)
Chinese fans loved the original so much there just had to be a remake. But, writes Nicolas Groffman, that’s when the military got involved
PUBLISHED : Monday, 29 October, 2018, 8:02am
UPDATED : Thursday, 01 November, 2018, 4:41pm
Nicolas Groffman

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In the summer of 1986, my friend Charles and I saw a trailer for the most amazing film conceivable, with F-14s landing on carriers.

They crashed down amid the steam in super-modern all-grey livery. The film came out a few months later and only those with large reserves of intellectual snobbery failed to enjoy it. It was Top Gun.

In mainland China and Hong Kong, the movie was called “Zhuang Zhi Ling Yun”, a good metaphorical name implying reaching for the clouds. It is a perennial favourite in China, and many know the movie scene by scene, as became apparent when in January 2011 the PLA Air Force released footage of aerial combat exercises, including a scene of a successful attack on a drone.

Except it wasn’t.

It was a clip from Top Gun. Chinese internet users spotted this immediately, exposed the trick, and humiliated the air force, which removed the clip from its website and presumably told off whoever was responsible – but the seed of an idea had been planted. China must have its own Top Gun!

The 2017 film Kong Tian Lie, or Sky Hunters, which stars Fan Bingbing and her boyfriend Li Chen, was billed as being the first movie to have the full cooperation of the PLA Air Force. It was not.

That honour goes to Jian Shi Chu Ji, or Sky Fighters, released in March 2011. It did not get good reviews from ordinary cinema-goers, because it managed to strike that special blend of cliché and tedium that robs even potentially exciting situations of all passion.

You would think that filming J-10s in dogfight sequences would inevitably be thrilling.

But all suspense is removed; no one is ever in danger for more than 30 seconds, and scenes of the inquiries into dangerous flying last longer than the scenes of the actual dangerous flying.

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Top Gun is a perennial favourite for many Chinese film-goers. Photo: Alamy

Sky Fighters does however have moments of comedy. At a press conference for obsequious civilians, the film’s hero, General Yue, answers a foreign woman who throws him a tricky question. “You are the bravest pilot I have ever seen,” she says, “but what do you think of George W Bush?” to which Yue replies, “I’m better than him, because he can’t speak Chinese, and I’m a better pilot.”

He also explains to another foreign reporter that “war is best avoided, but if it comes, it is better to be prepared”. The reporter is at first surprised but then nods as he slowly comprehends these sage words.

Other reviews of this film have noted its scene-by-scene mimicking of Top Gun – granted it has a motorbike-along-the-runway scene, and it has the two male protagonists at odds who are reconciled at the end.

But it’s definitely a movie in its own right – and one which is old-fashioned and uncool. It even has a scene where the general’s wife sneaks up behind her husband and covers his eyes to make him guess who she is, while he pretends to run through a list of other girls. What comedy!

Chinese people of a certain age will remember a popular song from 1991 with lyrics describing a similarly annoying event and a man who guesses Mary, Sunny, and Ivory.

Come on, air force guy who wrote the script for the 2011 movie. You had 20 years to think of something new. Even the bar scene seems struck in the 1990s, with people ordering coffee as if it’s a new invention, and there are fruit bowls holding cherry tomatoes and bananas. Very KTV.

Weirder still, when they move to a new base, the commander hands over a bag of “feminine products” to the two female officers. I’m not making this up. The women are delighted, of course.

https://cdn3.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/images/methode/2018/10/29/5bf98a34-da72-11e8-a41d-3d2712b32637_1320x770_115057.JPG
The 2011 Chinese film Sky Fighters flopped. Photo: Handout

Cut to 2017 and the much flashier Sky Hunters. The heroes are too cool even to wear proper air force uniforms, having been issued with sunglasses and leather jackets. In the six years that have gone by, Chinese studios have learnt to flash cash and get Hollywood bigshots on board.

They have Hans Zimmer for the score; they have the guy who did the computer-generated effects for Game of Thrones; they have lots of foreign extras.

Sadly, however, the PLA, once again, insisted on controlling the script and the production. And once again, they drained it of any real suspense or innovation.

At one point the movie makers seem to realise this – when a Chinese fighter inverts above a US spyplane, the pilot yells, “I think I’ve see this in a movie somewhere.”

Of course he has – it’s from the first five minutes of Top Gun.

https://cdn4.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/images/methode/2018/10/29/362018da-da74-11e8-a41d-3d2712b32637_1320x770_115057.JPG
China’s J-10 fighters take a starring role in both films. Photo: Handout

But instead of having the foreigners spout nonsense as in the 2011 film, the Americans say things that sound Hollywood-like – “He’s cute. Cuter than you,” says the female spy-plane crew member to her male colleague, referring to the hero Li Chen.

And – I’m not sure if this is meant to be a joke – Islamic State-style terrorists have one member who roars pointlessly when angry and looks like a comedy version of BA Baracus.

Fan Bingbing doesn’t have much to do in this movie, but she has a key role in its most idiotic scene.

The hero is thought to have perished, and so she stands alone on the runway – until … oh, why are there hundreds of people running behind her with happy faces? What have they seen? She turns and sees his smoking damaged plane is limping towards them through the grey sky.

Her expression turns to joy as she realises he has survived. Meanwhile we, the audience, wonder why so many people are celebrating before he has even landed.

And indeed how can he land with the entire cast – and extras – cheering and dancing jigs in his flight path?

https://cdn1.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/images/methode/2018/10/29/b9d0bf4a-da6f-11e8-a41d-3d2712b32637_1320x770_115057.jpg
Li Chen starred in Sky Hunters, but the air force insisted on having the final say. Photo: Handout

The film has its good points. It’s interesting to see all those new Chinese aircraft: the Y-20 airlifter, the J-20 stealth fighter and the H-6, as well as the J-10s and J-11s that we saw in Sky Fighters.

Li Jiahang is excellent as the dopey pilot who is taken hostage. And Tomer Oz, an Israeli actor sporting an Islamic-looking beard, is weirdly menacing as a Central Asian air force veteran who becomes a terrorist boss. And there’s a parachuting scene with a German shepherd dog which is just plain fun.

Chinese film-goers, not known for their polite reviews, generally panned the film.

It got two stars on Douban.com. About the most positive review was titled, “Is Sky Hunter so awful that you can’t watch it?” concluding generously that it wasn’t.

People were particularly rude about Fan Bingbing, of course, but it’s hardly her fault the movie was no good.

No one was bold enough to blame the military for meddling in the movie, but that is probably why Top Gun succeeded back in 1986 while Sky Hunter fails.

In 1986, the US Navy supported the movie studio but was smart enough not to tamper with the story and the production.

In China, the military made the movie, and expected everyone else to do as they were told. The result was what you’d expect from the military: discipline, technology, and no freedom of expression. Perhaps the 2023 version, which I predict will be called Sky Warriors, will be better.

Nicolas Groffman, who practised law in Beijing and Shanghai, is a partner at law firm Harrison Clark Rickerbys in London

THREADS
Where in the world is Fan Bingbing? (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70896-Where-in-the-world-is-Fan-Bingbing)
Chinese Counterfeits, Fakes & Knock-Offs (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?57980-Chinese-Counterfeits-Fakes-amp-Knock-Offs)

[GeneChing]

Of course she's pro-PRC now. Who knows what she went through during her disappearance? Now that she's back, she'll surely toe the party line.


Fan Bingbing is cheerleading for China over the South China Sea after the government disappeared her (https://www.businessinsider.com/fan-bingbing-humbled-by-china-touts-beijing-claim-to-south-china-sea-2018-11)
Alexandra Ma 34m

https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5bf3e85066be505ba910d8f2-1334-667.jpg
A composite image showing Fan Bingbing before her disappearance, and the image she re-shared on social media, asserting Chinese dominance over the South China Sea and Taiwan. Getty Images/Weibo/Business Insider

China disappeared actress Fan Bingbing for three months earlier this year when she was accused of tax evasion.

She reappeared last month with a groveling apology to the Chinese government.

Over the weekend she published a post touting China's controversial claims to the South China Sea and Taiwan.

It marks a striking conversion for Fan from pariah to effectively being a mouthpiece for China's geopolitical ambitions.

Actress Fan Bingbing wrote a post touting China's controversial territorial claims to the South China Sea, in her first appearance on social media since issuing a humiliating apology to Beijing for evading tax.

The actress disappeared from the public eye for three months earlier this year after she was accused of tax evasion. She broke her silence in early October with a groveling message to the Chinese government, which found that she signed a secret contract to avoid paying her taxes.

On Saturday the actress published her first post since the apology on popular microblogging site Weibo, which featured a map posted by China's Communist Youth League of the country's mainland, Taiwan, and a demarcated South China Sea with the Chinese flag imposed on it.

Fan added the caption: "China, without a bit missing!"

https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5bf3dfb00d7c677ab625e027-960-720.jpg
A screenshot of Fan's Weibo post.Fan Bingbing/Weibo

China controversially claims to own both the South China Sea and the self-governing island of Taiwan.

China, Taiwan, Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam all have claims in the South China Sea, many of which overlap. About $3 trillion of shipborne trade passes through the area every year, making it a major economic and strategic prize.

Beijing's claim to the South China Sea is marked by a dashed line, as can be seen in Fan's post above. The more complicated web of territorial claims can be seen in this map:

https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/57adec39ce38f252008b66a8-750-562.jpg
A map showing the overlapping claims in the South China Sea. Reuters

China is extremely defensive of its territorial claims in the sea. After a British warship sailed through waters claimed by China in September, the state-run China Daily warned that it could derail a future UK-China trade deal over the slight.

Last week US Vice President Mike Pence told Southeast Asian leaders that the South China Sea "doesn't belong to any one nation," and reportedly flew through the area in a move that likely riled Beijing.

Beijing also insists that Taiwan is part of China, even though the island nation has been self-governing for decades and considers itself an independent nation.

Taiwan claims that China uses economic partnerships to pressure countries to cut off diplomatic ties with it.

[GeneChing]

Well, that's a good chunk of change. Curious who paid out.


JANUARY 22, 2019 9:04PM PT
Chinese Stars, Entertainment Companies Pay $1.7 Billion in Back Taxes (https://variety.com/2019/film/asia/china-stars-pay-back-taxes-fan-bingbing-1203115262/)
By PATRICK FRATER
Asia Bureau Chief

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/fan-bingbing.jpg?w=1000&h=563&crop=1
CREDIT: INVISION/AP/SHUTTERSTOCK

Chinese film and TV stars and entertainment companies have forked over an additional $1.7 billion (RMB11.7 billion) in taxes in the wake of last summer’s scandal surrounding actress Fan Bingbing and a subsequent government crackdown. The figure was announced late Tuesday by China’s State Tax Administration.

Chinese authorities launched a probe into the tax affairs of the entertainment sector last October. Companies and individuals were asked to examine and, if necessary, correct their post-2016 tax payments by the end of December. Those who complied would be exempt from penalties for tax evasion, the tax administration said.

In July last year, Fan was accused of hiding a proportion of her income from a film production through the use of multiple contracts, only some of which were declared to the tax authorities. It also emerged that she had set up companies in various Chinese provinces that offered lower tax regimes.

In October, after vanishing from public view for months, Fan resurfaced. She apologized and was ordered to pay $130 million (RMB884 million) in back taxes and penalties on behalf of herself and her companies.

The huge amount collected from other stars and entertainment firms – the figure is roughly equal to 20% of China’s gross box office last year – reinforces the argument that the use of double contracts and tax loopholes was widespread throughout the Chinese industry. The number of productions initiated in China slowed sharply from last summer as production companies and talent reassessed their financial situation and relationships.

“Industry workers should practice socialist core values…and strive to be entertainment workers with belief, empathy and sense of responsibility in the new era,” authorities said, according to state news agency Xinhua.

[GeneChing]

FEBRUARY 14, 2019 4:27AM PT
China’s Web Series, Online Films Required to Register, Report Actor Fees (https://variety.com/2019/film/news/china-fan-bingbing-web-series-online-films-register-government-1203139468/)
By REBECCA DAVIS

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/fan-bingbing.jpg?w=1000&h=563&crop=1
CREDIT: ALVARO BARRIENTOS/AP/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK

Most web series and online films in China must register with the government and report their budgets and actor salaries starting from this Friday, the country’s media watchdog has decreed, in a further tightening of official oversight of the entertainment sector amid an uproar over talent pay.

All live-action and animated series intended for online distribution with budgets of more than RMB5 million ($740,000) and all online movies with budgets exceeding RMB1 million ($148,000) must now register and pass approval twice before they are disseminated to viewers, China’s National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA) declared in a December directive posted Wednesday to its official website. Companies must report their project’s title, genre, content and budget before production begins, and provide an update on information including actual expenses and actor pay after completion. The new regulation goes into effect Friday.

Nearly all substantive online content projects will be affected since the budget cutoffs are quite low. Even mediocre web series cost about RMB1 million to create, a Beijing-based production company associate told the Global Times newspaper.

The measure is a follow-up to regulations on tax payments and actor salaries released last year, and shows that Chinese authorities are policing online content with equal attention as traditional TV and film production.

In the wake of last year’s tax-evasion scandal involving superstar Fan Bingbing, authorities set a cap on actor salaries, stating that talent fees cannot exceed 40% of a project’s total production costs and that leading stars cannot be paid more than 70% of a work’s budget for talent. Fan had been slammed for the widespread practice of using “yin-yang contracts,” in which only the smaller of two contracts drawn up for the same work is reported to the tax authorities as income.

The new regulation on web content is part of China’s growing effort to crack down on skyrocketing celeb fees. “Government regulation will re-balance the market that has been troubled by star worship over artistic appreciation,” the Global Times cited an industry insider as saying, though he stressed that it would take a long time before yin-yang contracts were actually be stamped out.

Chicoms tax the rich and regulate that. Interesting concept.

[GeneChing]

Scandal-Ridden Stars Must Compensate Studios for Money-Losing Films, Delegates Say (https://www.caixinglobal.com/2019-03-12/scandal-ridden-stars-must-compensate-studios-for-money-losing-films-delegates-say-101391280.html)
By Liu Shuangshuang, Shan Yuxiao, and Zhao Runhua / Mar 12, 2019 11:55 AM / Politics & Law

https://img.caixin.com/2019-03-12/1552362903048835.jpg
Fan Bingbing. Photo: VCG

A scandal in China could ruin a celebrity's career — and a company's business.

In 2018, star Fan Bingbing’s tax evasion scandal emerged. Soon after, the fiscal revenue and profit of Talent Television and Film, a producer behind Fan’s film “Legend of Ba Qing (巴清传),” dropped dramatically.

Talent Television and Film said that the company failed to profit because no partners were willing to screen Fan’s film, for fear of being blamed for giving limelight to an alleged law-breaker.

One famous screenwriter, who is also a CPPCC delegate to China’s highest-level annual meetings going on this week, drafted a proposal with 30 other delegates to establish a “celebrity blacklist” to protect lawful interests of companies like Talent.

Zhao said that “celebrity scandal risks can be hard to predict. This could bring significant loss to investors, and will affect other innocent actors and actresses.” She added that it’s unfortunate that TV series and films starring such celebrities will often be “killed” permanently by the industry to avoid audiences' boycotts.

The celebrity blacklist would keep records on scandal-involved celebrities, and allow further punishment decided by the industry and legal departments. This includes setting up an industry rating system to evaluate the seriousness of a celebrity’s scandal.

The proposal also advocates that a TV series or film starring a scandal-ridden celebrity might be prohibited from being screened, but for no more than six months. Zhao said the proposal will allow investors to demand material compensation from the celebrities.
Interesting strategy. I do think celebrities should take more responsibility for their scandals.

[GeneChing]

APRIL 2019
“The Big Error Was That She Was Caught”: The Untold Story Behind the Mysterious Disappearance of Fan Bingbing, the World’s Biggest Movie Star (https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/03/the-untold-story-disappearance-of-fan-bingbing-worlds-biggest-movie-star)
NOW YOU SEE HER
Fan Bingbing at the Cannes Film Festival’s opening gala in May 2018. The following month, she disappeared from public view.
She vanished without a trace last year. But it was what happened next that sent a shudder through the Chinese film industry.
by MAY JEONG
MARCH 26, 2019 9:00 AM

Fan Bingbing has been mostly staying at home these days, sending messages on WeChat (the Chinese WhatsApp), working on her English, receiving guests, doing charity work “to wash away her sins,” and otherwise “trying to stay positive,” according to a producer who knows her well. But before the events of last spring, when she abruptly disappeared from public view for three months, she was busy being the most famous actress in China, which is to say, the most famous actress in the world.

Fan is China’s highest-paid female star, with a net worth estimated at $100 million. Her 62.9 million followers on Weibo, China’s Twitter, rivals the total membership of the Communist Party. Among her fans, her classical “melon seed” face—widely viewed in China as a Platonic ideal of beauty—has inspired countless acts of copycat surgery. She is often described as baifumei, a phrase meaning pale-skinned, rich, and beautiful. “The rules of Chinese beauty are rigid, and she follows them,” says Elijah Whaley, a market researcher who specializes in China. Fan has been the face of Adidas, Louis Vuitton, and Moët, selling everything from lipstick to diamonds. They say you can’t take a good selfie with her, because she will suck all the beauty away. Her fame has caught the attention of Hollywood: This year, after appearances in the Iron Man and X-Men franchises, she was slated to begin filming an international spy thriller alongside Jessica Chastain, Marion Cotillard, Penélope Cruz, and Lupita Nyong’o.

https://media.vanityfair.com/photos/5c992a871c3519239055da53/master/h_1440,c_limit/bing-bing-april-2019-embed01.jpg
Fan Bingbing in a dress, smiling
THE FACE OF CHINA
Fan at a Cannes screening in 2018. At nearly 63 million, her social-media following rivals the total membership of the Communist Party.
By Mike Marsland/WireImage.

The trouble began last year, on May 28, when Fan was flying to Los Angeles with her retinue (including a friend who reportedly got work done to look like her). On Weibo, a famed TV host named Cui Yongyuan posted two versions of Fan’s contract for an upcoming film titled Cell Phone 2. One put her salary at $7.8 million; the other at $1.5 million. The implication was clear: Fan had fraudulently declared the smaller sum to the Chinese tax authorities, to avoid paying taxes on the rest. The contracts were redacted in parts, but you could still make out a faint trace of the famous Fan name.

At first no one thought anything of it. For starters, everyone knew that Cui, a household name in China, had an ongoing feud with the makers of Cell Phone 2. (The film was a sequel to Cell Phone, China’s highest-grossing movie of 2003, which starred Fan as the mistress of a character who bore a striking resemblance to Cui.) Besides, the hiss of gossip always trails stars like Fan. If you were to believe the Hong Kong tabloids, Fan’s brother Chengcheng is actually her illegitimate son. (They are 19 years apart.) Fan was said to have gotten her upper lip surgically enhanced, her chin shaved, the fat from her thighs removed. She was dating this rich guy. No, she was dating this other rich guy. In fact, there was a set price for a night with her: 2 million yuan, or $300,000. It said so in a booklet that supposedly lists the going rates of all other A-list actresses.

So there was every reason to think that the ado over Cell Phone 2 would come and go, just like any other celebrity gossip. But 12 hours later, when Fan landed at LAX, the world seemed to have turned against her.

Fan was born after the death of Mao Zedong, and has lived her entire life governed by the go-go brand of capitalism introduced by his successor, Deng Xiaoping. At 37, she belongs to the first generation that had been allowed to amass private wealth under the informal slogan “Let some people get rich first.” Still, with many Chinese earning pre-reform salaries of less than $10,000 a year, fans were shocked to learn how much Fan could command for only four days of work. “Most people were astonished,” says Ming Beaver Kwei, who produced the Fan vehicle Sophie’s Revenge. “People knew she made money, but they didn’t know it was that much money.” Even worse, Fan had tried to shirk her civic duty by trying to keep most of her morally suspect gains for herself.

Fan’s production company immediately issued a statement denying the charges and informing Cui that they had retained the services of a Beijing law firm. Cui apologized to Fan and retracted his accusation. But by then it was already a national scandal. A week later, on June 4, the central tax authorities deputized the local tax bureau in Jiangsu, the coastal province where Fan’s company was registered, to launch an investigation. Shares of companies associated with Fan plunged by 10 percent, the maximum daily limit on the Chinese stock market. Three days later, Chinese censors banned all stories on the Internet about taxes, films, and Fan.

The movie industry at large also fell under scrutiny. On June 27, five government agencies, including film and tax authorities, issued a joint directive capping salaries for on-screen talent at 40 percent of a movie’s total production budget. Individual stars, meanwhile, would not be allowed to earn more than 70 percent of a production’s total wages for actors. The notice chastised the industry for “distorting social values” and encouraging the “growing tendency towards money worship” through the “blind chasing of stars.”

At first, Fan tried to maintain her normal routine. She attended a Celine Dion concert, made a trip to Tibet for charity, and visited a children’s hospital in Shanghai. Then, in the first week of July, she canceled a meeting with a production company, informing them that she had been placed under house arrest.

One night, amid the scandal, Fan went out to dinner with her best friend, the director Li Yu. As they were driving home, Li recalled, Fan reached for her hand and held it tightly. Li was surprised: Fan had never done that before, through their four movies and 12 years of friendship. Fan didn’t say anything, because she herself didn’t know what lay ahead.

Two days later, Fan Bingbing, the most famous woman in China, whose primary job is being seen by the public, vanished without a trace.

It is hard to convey Fan’s appeal, because there is no star in Hollywood quite like her. She combines the glamour of Nicole Kidman, the sunniness of Julia Roberts, the pluck of Jennifer Lawrence, and the box-office draw of Sandra Bullock. In Beijing, she is the literal girl next door: nearly everyone I met claimed to be her neighbor. A lawyer told me that her house was next to his at Star River, a gated community protected by razor wire. An actor said he often saw her black S.U.V. parked in front of his apartment building.

continued next post

[GeneChing]

https://media.vanityfair.com/photos/5c992a87813fe867dd59b271/master/w_1440,c_limit/bing-bing-april-2019-embed02.jpg
Fan's fiancé. director Li Chen, with Fan
FEAR AND RUMORS
After Fan disappeared, Internet sleuths noticed that her fiancé, director Li Chen (left), appeared in a video without his engagement ring.
From VCG/Getty Images.

Fan was raised in the port city of Yantai, overlooking the Korean Bay. Her grandfather was a general in the naval air force, and her grandmother gave her the Chinese character bing, or “ice,” to honor the family’s ties to the sea. Fan grew up watching her father, a pop singer, perform at regional competitions. Her mother was a dancer and an actress. Both were party committee members and served as cadres in the cultural division of the local port authority. When Fan’s middle-school teacher suggested she take up music, they bought her a piano and a flute. The family was poor. Young Fan knew this: when she was in a car crash, at age 14, the first thing she did was try to protect the flute. (She still has it to this day.)

Fan spent the next three months recuperating in a hospital, where she watched a Taiwanese drama about Wu Zetian, a consort who rose to become empress during the Tang dynasty. Empress Wu gave Fan the dream of becoming an actress. (Twenty years later, she would produce and star in a TV series about Wu.) She entered a performing-arts school in Shanghai, where she was the youngest of 40 in her class. Sharing a tiny room with seven other students, she struggled to get by on a monthly allowance of $60. On rough days, she sustained herself on a single meat bun or bowl of beef noodle soup.

Through a school play, Fan met a producer who cast her as a chambermaid in an 18th-century costume drama. My Fair Princess aired in April 1998, when Fan was 16 years old. The show became a cultural phenomenon and catapulted her to stardom.

Because Fan has been China’s sweetheart for two decades, younger fans feel as though they have grown up alongside her, a sort of Emma Watson for Chinese millennials. A Chinese-language student told me she learned Mandarin by watching Fan in My Fair Princess. Another showed me a photo of a crane-pattern dress she had ordered on Taobao (the Chinese version of eBay), a knockoff of what Fan wore to Cannes.

Nearly all of the people I spoke with who had worked with Fan—English teachers, dialogue coaches, designers, lawyers, film executives, producers, directors, and fellow actors—told me she was kind, and impossible to hate. “She so much cares about the people working for her and treats them really well,” said Fang Li, who has produced several of Fan’s films. “Not many actresses are like Fan Bingbing. She is so strong, spiritually. She can take a lot of pressure, and still smile.”

Daniel Junior Furth, who taught English to Chinese actors, called Fan “ultra-kind and pleasant.” Even though she was always surrounded by people he felt were more important than he was, Furth said, Fan made sure he “never got that sense of being neglected or put off to the side, which is rare in a society that is so hierarchical.” Once, she called him up to say she had front-row tickets to a play at the national theater. Would he like to come? Afterward, she asked her driver to take Furth home. “There was no stunt about it,” he recalled. It was just a nice thing that Fan had done.

Fan is also, by all accounts, a very hard worker. She runs her own acting school, production company, and cosmetics line, sleeping only four hours a night. Kwei, the producer, recalled a rock-climbing sequence Fan shot for Sophie’s Revenge. Fan showed up with a raging fever. Kwei offered to reschedule. Fan said no, they should keep going. She was O.K. to climb, she said, but they would have to dub her voice in post, because she was too ill to speak. “We worked through the night,” Kwei told me.

In 2015, a reporter asked Fan whether she was going to follow custom and marry rich. “I don’t need to marry rich,” she replied in a now oft-repeated rejoinder. “I am rich.” (“People were like, *****, wow,” a young fan recalled.) Her brashness earned her the nickname “Fan Ye”—something akin to Master Fan, a title usually reserved for men. “She is like a strong man inside,” said Fang, the producer. “But outside she is like a pretty girl.”

Fan’s image as the country’s kindest, hardest-working actress only made her sudden disappearance that much more surprising—and terrifying—to the film industry in China. In the month after she was engulfed in scandal, shares in publicly listed movie companies in China fell by an average of 18 percent.

Last summer, after Fan stopped appearing in public and posting on social media, the entire world began speculating about her whereabouts. On August 28, Fan’s fiancé was seen in a promotional video without his engagement ring, and the Internet drew its own conclusions. Five days later, unverified tweets claimed that Fan, after seeking counsel from Jackie Chan, had landed in Los Angeles to request asylum. Chan quickly denied the rumor that same day. Fan’s birthday, September 16, came and went. Montblanc dropped her as brand ambassador. So did Chopard and Swisse, an Australian vitamin company.

Then, on October 3, Fan reappeared as suddenly as she had vanished. According to the South China Morning Post, she had been held under a form of detention known as “residential surveillance,” at a holiday resort in a suburb of Jiangsu. The system was instituted in 2012, under President Xi Jinping, making it legal for the Chinese secret police to detain anyone charged with endangering state security or committing corruption and hold them at an undisclosed location for up to six months without access to lawyers or family members. Sources close to Fan told me that she had been picked up by plainclothes police. While under detention, she was forbidden to make public statements or use her phone. She wasn’t given a pen or paper to write with, nor allowed any privacy, even when taking showers.

continued next post

[GeneChing]

https://media.vanityfair.com/photos/5c992a875c77773366031a96/master/w_1440,c_limit/bing-bing-april-2019-embed03.jpg
Fan with Marion Cotillard, Jessica Chastain, Penélope Cruz, and Lupita Nyong’o.
BEYOND BOND
Before she vanished, Fan was slated to co-star in a spy thriller with Marion Cotillard, Jessica Chastain, Penélope Cruz, and Lupita Nyong’o.
By George Pimentel/WireImage.

After her release, Fan issued an obsequious apology on social media. Saying she had endured “an unprecedented amount of pain,” she said she felt “ashamed and guilty” for not “setting a good example for society and the industry.” She went on: “Today I’m facing enormous fears and worries over the mistakes I made! I have failed the country, society’s support and trust, and the love of my devoted fans! I offer my sincere apology here once again! I beg for everyone’s forgiveness!” She concluded with a reference to a popular Chinese song from the 1950s: “Without the party and the state, without the love of the people, there would have been no Fan Bingbing!”

That same day, tax authorities reported that Fan had declared only a third of her $4.4 million salary for Air Strike, a Chinese action film starring Bruce Willis. The movie’s release was canceled, and a warrant was issued for one of its investors. Fan’s longtime agent, a former nightclub manager named Mu Xiaoguang, was found destroying the company books and was taken into custody. Fan was ordered to pay $131 million in back taxes and penalties—including $70 million from her personal funds. (In fact, Fang told me, Fan wound up paying only $2 million of her own money, which she raised by borrowing funds and selling off properties.) It could have been worse. Until 2009, first-time tax offenders in China could be charged with criminal liability. And until 2011, economic crimes such as tax evasion were punishable by death.

The harsh treatment of China’s biggest star sent a clear signal to everyone in the Chinese film industry: the boom days of the past were coming to an end. When the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, actors and actresses were renamed “film workers” in an effort to cut “capitalist connections and remold them into socialist citizens,” according to Sabrina Qiong Yu, a scholar of Chinese film. For decades, film workers received salaries on par with factory workers, and most movies were imported from Hollywood. By 2000, the Chinese film industry was producing fewer than 100 movies a year—and only two dozen or so were shown in one of the country’s 8,000 theaters. The rest were stored at the national granary, in climate-uncontrolled archives.

Then, after 2010, the government decided there was big money to be made in movies. State banks began to finance mergers and acquisitions, and China’s studios went on a buying bender. They snapped up the U.S. theater chain AMC, tried to purchase Dick Clark Productions, which produces the Golden Globes, and signed major financing deals with Sony Pictures, Universal, Fox, and Lionsgate. In total, the deals added up to $10 billion, heavily financed by state-backed banks. Today the Chinese film industry produces more than 800 films a year, and China will soon overtake the United States as the world’s largest film market. For the past four years, China has been building 25 new movie screens every day.

Because show business is still so new in China—it’s been only 20 years since private companies have been allowed to make movies—there aren’t many bankable stars who can guarantee box-office success. As a result, A-list actors like Fan Bingbing were able to command top dollar: it was not uncommon for as much as 90 percent of a film’s production budget to go toward on-screen talent. “We are in the golden age of Hollywood, where the star is key,” said a Chinese film executive who asked not to be identified.

Last year, after Fan turned down the role of the Chinese oceanographer in The Meg, a sci-fi thriller produced by Warner Bros., the studio considered Tang Wei and Jing Tian before deciding on Li Bingbing. “It’s a very short list,” said the same executive, who was involved in the film. Fan seemed poised to become that impossible thing: a star who can appease fans in the three Chinas—mainland, Taiwan, and Hong Kong—as well as Hollywood studios, and their sudden desire for Asian faces.

The star-dependent culture was on full display at a DVD store in Beijing where I bought pirated copies of Fan’s movies. Discs were organized not by title or category but by actor. Nicolas Cage, Tom Hanks, Tom Hardy, and Jason Statham all received the full-row treatment. Nicole Kidman, whom many Chinese consider a vision of unimpeachable beauty, also got her own row. Others—Natalie Portman, Michelle Williams, even Meryl Streep—were relegated to a row seemingly reserved for miscellaneous white actresses.

In the years that the Chinese film industry was allowed to grow unregulated, it became common for stars to falsify contracts to avoid paying taxes on the huge sums that they were commanding. That’s why Fan’s sudden fall sent a chill through the rest of the film world. “There was a certain surprise in the industry,” said Kwei, the producer. “Fan Bingbing was only doing the usual standard package.” David Unger, Gong Li’s manager, put it more bluntly. “The big error,” he said, “was that she was caught.”

Fan’s disappearance, and the subsequent crackdown, was the result of larger forces at play: After years of double-digit growth, the Chinese economy is slowing down. The government claims that economic output grew by 6.5 percent last year—the lowest rate in more than a decade—but observers believe the rate is as low as 2 percent. With consumer spending slowing and foreign investment plunging in the midst of a trade war, the government is seeking to redirect economic power back under state control. It won’t be long, many in China predict, before the tax scandal bleeds into other sectors. What happened to Fan was merely the “primary incision,” says Alex Zhang, executive director of Zhengfu Pictures. Soon, the authorities will “cut all the way down to the rest of the business community.”

In March 2018, President Xi established the National Supervision Commission, granting it sweeping powers to investigate corruption and tax evasion. Suspects could now be legally kidnapped, interrogated, and held for as long as six months. That same month, he also gave the Central Publicity Department, which heads up propaganda efforts, the authority to regulate the film industry. (The only other time film was put under the propaganda ministry, according to industry insiders, was during the Cultural Revolution.) Films that had passed the censors years ago have now been retroactively banned. “That liminal space where you can get away with stuff, that’s gone,” said Michael Berry, a professor of contemporary Chinese culture at U.C.L.A.


Fan was not alone in evading taxes: “The big error was that she was caught.”

Under Xi’s crackdown, tens of thousands of people have disappeared into the maw of the police state. An eminent TV news anchor was taken away hours before going on air. A retired professor with views critical of the government was dragged away during a live interview on Voice of America. A billionaire was abducted from his private quarters in the Four Seasons in Hong Kong. Other high-profile disappearances include Interpol president Meng Hongwei in September, photojournalist Lu Guang in November, two Canadians who went missing in December, as well as the writer Yang Hengjun, who went missing in January. “The message being sent out is that nobody is too tall, too big, too famous, too pretty, too whatever,” said Steve Tsang, who runs the China Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.

Taken together, Xi’s moves represent a dramatic rollback of the economic reforms and relative freedom that enabled the film industry to flourish in the time before his reign. “Deng Xiaoping kept everyone together by promising to make them rich,” said Nicholas Bequelin, the East Asia director of Amnesty International. “What keeps things together under Xi is fear. Fear of the system, where no matter how high you are, from one day to the next you can disappear.”

When I arrived in Beijing, just before Christmas, everyone in the film industry seemed to be in a state of panic. The tax authorities had issued a directive calling for all film companies to do ziwo piping, or “self-criticism,” and “rectify themselves” by paying the back taxes they owed on unreported income before December 31. Those who paid up would not be fined. Starting in the new year, however, there would be “heavy, random checks,” and those who were caught would be “dealt with seriously.”
continued next post

[GeneChing]

https://media.vanityfair.com/photos/5c992a884761b6729c5fee79/master/w_1440,c_limit/bing-bing-april-2019-embed04.jpg
Fan in *X-Men: Days of Future Past*
VANISHING ACT
Fan made her proper Hollywood debut as Blink, a mutant with the power to disappear and reappear, in X-Men: Days of Future Past.
From AF Archive/Alamy.

The authorities also declared that special tax zones, which had allowed stars to pay lower taxes, were no longer legal. Following the proverb “The mountains are tall and the emperor is far away,” many film studios had registered in these special zones, far from the major coastal cities. Tax rates in the zones could be as low as 0.15 percent. Now, overnight, those working in the film industry would be taxed at the highest rate—45 percent. And all this was to be paid for not only 2018 but also for the two previous fiscal years, dating back to January 2016.

The rising fear was palpable on WeChat, where people were sharing ad hoc formulas meant to help calculate how much tax they owed in lieu of any official guidelines. Many faced staggering sums that dwarfed Fan’s tax bill. Open letters protesting the yidaoqie, or “one knife chop” approach, of the tax bureau made the rounds before being taken down.

Because of Fan’s clout in the industry, the probe of her finances had incriminated many companies that were partnering with her on projects. Scores of films have been put on hold. “Everyone you can think of is dealing with taxes right now,” said Kwei, the producer. Many had either already been “invited for tea” at the tax bureau, or were awaiting their turn. Others were rushing to meet with their accountants, or were holed up in their offices reviewing past budget sheets. Victoria Mao, who runs a production company, told me that all of her projects had been put on hold just days earlier, after she received a call from the tax bureau asking her to self-audit. “We don’t have any time to go forward,” she said, “because we have to go back.”

People were even more reticent than usual to talk on the phone. “We are not the only people on the line, so to speak,” producer Andre Morgan told me, before suggesting we meet at his hotel. Morgan, who is widely credited for introducing Jackie Chan to Hollywood, described how things have changed since he came to China in 1972. “There weren’t that many rules back then,” he said. Now the bureaucracy is catching up with the industry. As he sees it, the people aren’t afraid of the state—the state is afraid of the people. That’s why the government singled out and punished a select few, like Fan—to keep everyone else in line. Morgan quoted a Chinese proverb: the state is “killing the chicken to scare the monkey.” (He also said, in a burst of animal metaphors, that it is only a matter of time before “the chickens come home to roost,” and that the government is doing whatever it can to “catch the mouse.”)

After the government issued the new tax directive, screenwriters had protested to the authorities, who in turn agreed to tax income on original screenplays at only 16 percent, the maximum rate on intellectual property. This enraged directors, who were being taxed the full 45 percent for their work. If a completed movie is not intellectual property, they demanded, then what is? “What is culture?” wondered Fan’s producer, Fang Li, who himself owed $1.7 million in taxes. “What is intellectual property?” The tax authorities, it seemed, had thrown the film industry into a state of existential crisis.

My first Saturday in Beijing, I attended a dinner at the home of an actor. Dinner begins early in the city, and by the time I arrived, at seven P.M., the ayah had already put out dishes of pork belly, cured beef, tofu curds, lotus root, and chicken feet. And those were only the dishes I could discern.

Before we sat down to eat, the actor, who had moved in only two days before, offered to give his guests a tour of the multi-million-dollar home. We walked past a Japanese rock garden and a patio that opens up to a sweeping view of the city that was at once dystopian and weirdly beautiful. Because the house was shaped like a spaceship, and because I had fallen into a jet-lagged sleep the night before watching a dubbed version of the new Blade Runner, and because I was about to eat dishes I would never learn the names of, I felt like I had been transported into the future. Fan, predictably, was said to be living “just three houses down.”

The dinner party consisted entirely of film people. It’s a socially incestuous community, where everyone either went to the same film school, or belongs to the same agency, or lives in the same gated community. Even those who were meeting for the first time that evening discovered they had many friends in common, and bonded quickly.

The first bottle of the night was a Merlot from a Bordeaux winery that Zhao Wei, Fan’s co-star from My Fair Princess, had purchased for an estimated $6.4 million in 2011. Now Zhao, who had recently been banned from the stock market for misleading investors, was rushing to pay her back taxes before the December 31 deadline. As we moved on to more expensive wine, the talk turned to other colleagues who were scrambling to raise money to pay their back taxes—selling cars, mortgaging homes, taking out loans. A director said he owed $29,000. An actor responded by saying he owed $73,000.

Was anyone angry? “If we get angry, we are done,” explained the actor’s agent, who was the only one not drinking with abandon. “You can’t make movies anymore. We have just the one government.” People, he added, were “not mad, but confused.” The informal rules that had governed the industry for decades were changing, which was unnerving. Even worse, no one seemed to know what the new rules were. Meanwhile, the government was “taking money from your pocket.” But what could you do?

Around one in the morning, after our host had passed out in one of the guest rooms, a neighbor complained about the noise we were making with the newly installed sound system. The same neighbor, the agent told me, had complained the night before. That party had also gone on for hours, with interminable talk of tax woes over interminable glasses of baijiu.

In 2015, Fan told the South China Morning Post that she had no guanxi, or connections, in show business. “In China, to be successful, it is often not enough to have talent and earn merit,” she said. “Some guanxi is almost always necessary. But when I walked into the entertainment industry, my family had no guanxi. So I knew I had to risk failure and bear the consequences alone.”

It’s a Cinderella story worthy of Hollywood. In fact, however, Fan had the ultimate guanxi—her family’s longtime involvement in the Communist Party. Throughout her career, Fan has continued to be openly friendly with the authorities. Indeed, two of the biggest awards she’s received—the Hundred Flower and the Golden Rooster—represent “official opinion from the government,” according to Gao Yitian, a producer who runs the First International Film Festival. Fan’s tax breaches were not especially egregious. But she had the money to pay, says Zhang, the film executive. And most important, he adds, the government “knew she is smart enough to cooperate.”

continued next post

[GeneChing]

https://media.vanityfair.com/photos/5c992a884761b6729c5fee78/master/w_1440,c_limit/bing-bing-april-2019-embed05.jpg
Fan walking inconspicuously
FAME AND MISFORTUNE
The first public sighting of Fan after her release, on October 15, 2018.
From VCG/Getty Images.

“That’s what happens here,” said Michael Gralapp, an entertainment recruiter who has consulted for a subsidiary of China Central Television. “You play ball, or you are screwed. So you play ball.”

Like many movie stars, Fan is famous more for the iconic traits she embodies than for her talents on-screen. (“When she is with a great director,” one publicist says, “she’s a great actress.”) In 2013, she made a China-only cameo as an unnamed nurse in Iron Man 3, a role that earned her the disparaging epithet of “flower vase”—a pretty prop in a Hollywood production. But the movie went on to make $121 million in China, and Hollywood took note. In 2014, Fan landed a bigger role in X-Men: Days of Future Past, as the teleporting superheroine Blink. She was also nominated for a Golden Horse Award, the Chinese equivalent of an Oscar, for her starring role in I Am Not Madame Bovary.

As her fame spread, Fan always made sure to stay in the good graces of the Communist Party. In 2017, she appeared in Sky Hunter, directed by Li Chen, to whom she is now engaged. Like Top Gun, the film is an unabashed work of military propaganda. In one scene, Fan appears in a bomber-pilot outfit, wielding an ax and running to save a boy and his mother. As the building disappears beneath their feet, Fan gets them to a helicopter just in time.

For the most part, Chinese films that have done well in the West have been either art-house pictures like Raise the Red Lantern or martial-arts movies in the tradition of Jackie Chan and Jet Li. (Ang Lee, whose Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon became the highest-grossing foreign-language film of all time in the U.S., was born in Taiwan.) Until recently, Fan has selected her roles with an eye not for potential exposure in Hollywood but for how she will be received at home. Her beauty, too, appeals to the domestic market. Taoists have long considered outer beauty—from “eyebrows like faraway mountains” to “feet like bamboo shoots carved in jade”—inexorably linked to inner virtue. And the Communist Party, scholars note, has expanded such time-honored definitions of beauty to include devotional sacrifice to the people. Fan, with her mix of patriotism and elegance, hits all the right notes. She is the perfect star for a modern China.

Since her release last October, Fan has consciously kept a low profile. (She and her agency declined to speak with VANITY FAIR for this story.) Her first post on social media after her public apology was an overt display of fealty to the Chinese government. On November 17, when a director made a pro-Taiwan comment at the Golden Horse Awards, Fan shared a pro-China post from the Communist youth league. “China,” she said, “cannot miss out on any inch.”

Her collaborators followed suit. On November 20, Feng Xiaogang, the director of the two Cell Phone movies, who was reported to have been fined $288 million, announced that his next film would be about the 70th anniversary of the founding of the party. Creative Artists Agency China, which represents Fan, was rumored to have lost more than half of its income with the scandal, and its agents have been scrambling to sign new talent. One analyst predicts that a third of the Chinese film industry will go out of business in the coming years, leaving fewer than 1,000 production companies standing. Not since the Cultural Revolution have artists in China been as wary of the state, and as aware of the necessity of appeasing it.

But capitalism, once unleashed, does not give up on its privileges and profits easily. The film industry in China remains huge. A studio movie in America typically opens on fewer than 2,500 screens. A wide release in China, by contrast, can open on more than 20,000 screens. More crucially, the country is said to need an estimated 500,000 scripts to fill all its available screens and airtime over the next five years. If the story of Fan is the story of modern film in China, then both are far from over.

Fan, for her part, appears to be quietly plotting a comeback. Throughout the crisis, her production company never shut its doors. “Of course she lost a lot of money,” said Fang, the producer. “But she’s not completely depressed.” Fang and Li, Fan’s best friend and frequent collaborator, have been discussing future projects for their favorite star. When I asked Li why she would risk casting Fan, she told me that the anguish Fan has gone through would become the well she draws from. “Nobody can be a better actress than her,” Li said.

Zhengfu Pictures, which was co-founded by the former head of the state-run China Film Group, has been in discussions to purchase the rights to 355, the spy thriller that Fan had been slated to star in with Jessica Chastain. The Hollywood star had personally contacted Fan about the movie, wanting to know why there were no female James Bonds. Wouldn’t it be cool, Chastain wondered, to make a super espionage movie with actresses from around the world?

Universal pledged $20 million for the rights to 355, but the movie’s Chinese distributors pulled out in the wake of the tax scandal. Now, backed by a venture-capital fund in Hollywood, Zhengfu hopes to resurrect the project. In China, at least, big money still depends on big stars—and big money, it appears, is still willing to bet on Fan Bingbing.

The subject of 355 came up as I was having a late lunch in the lobby of my hotel with Zhang, the director of Zhengfu Pictures. The sun was out, but it was so diffused through the infamous Beijing smog that you couldn’t be sure where the mountains ended and the high-rises began. Eighty years ago, before Chairman Mao, the building we were sitting in was a brick factory. Now it is a luxury hotel, with a penthouse frequented by Alibaba founder Jack Ma. While I was there, it was undergoing a top-to-bottom renovation, and the interior shifted daily: a wall I leaned on in the morning would be gone by the time I returned at night. I found it disorienting, but everyone around me seemed to regard the constant disruption as the price of progress.

Zhang, at age 30, personifies this particular brand of optimism. On January 22, the state tax authorities announced that they had collected a staggering $1.7 billion in back taxes from film and TV stars—an amount equal to 20 percent of China’s entire gross box office last year. But as Zhang sees it, President Xi isn’t out to ruin the film industry. He is making China more powerful. And a stronger China will, in the long run, be good for Chinese moviemakers.

Like most of the filmmakers I spoke to, Zhang mentioned both the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Square—not as cause for fear but as a way of emphasizing that they aren’t going to be deterred by a few billion dollars in back taxes. Picking up his fork, he traced an imaginary path in the air to illustrate the film industry’s attitude toward the government crackdown. “If you see a mountain,” he said, “just go around it.”

That sense of determination is apparently shared by Fan Bingbing. China’s film industry was built on the hustle and grit of young entrepreneurs like her—and as true hustlers know, there’s always money to be made, even in the face of authoritarian rule. “She is a businesswoman first, then an actress,” an industry insider told me.

Not long ago, Fan had drinks with her friend Li, who told me that they discussed Fan’s ordeal. If the best art reflects its times, the two concluded, who better to cast as a lead than Fan Ye herself?

Fan laughed at her luck. Perhaps there was an upside to becoming the world’s most celebrated missing person. “I worked so hard,” she told her friend, “and this is how I become famous.”

Isn't the biggest error of any criminal that they got caught? :rolleyes:

[GeneChing]

https://radiichina.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/fan-bingbing-jessica-chastain-penelope-cruz-lupita-nyongo-marion-cotillard-355-1200x900.jpg

Fan Bingbing Movie Comeback to Happen “This Year” (https://radiichina.com/fan-bingbing-movie-comeback-355/)
After being disappeared due to tax evasion last year, Fan Bingbing looks set to return via Jessica Chastain-led spy thriller 355
By RADII CHINA 3 days ago

She may not have opened a crazily expensive beauty salon to claw back some money after her enormous fine for tax evasion, but disgraced Chinese movie star Fan Bingbing looks set for a comeback after all.

Rumors have been bubbling away about her returning to the movie business via Jessica Chastain’s spy thriller 355 for a while, but now they’ve been given extra credence by director Simon Kinberg.

Talking to Collider (http://collider.com/simon-kinberg-dark-phoenix-new-mutants-355-interview/#images), Kinberg referenced Fan Bingbing by name and stated that she, Chastain, Lupita Nyong’o, Penelope Cruz, and Marion Cotillard were “not just interested, but committed” to the project.

Kinberg’s interview, taking place as part of WonderCon 2019, was mostly a promotional push for X-Men movie Dark Phoenix, and the director wasn’t pressed on whether participating in the film may prove difficult for Fan, given she’s yet to return to work following her disappearance and subsequent fine for tax evasion last year.

But he added that “we plan to make that movie this year” and that he’s currently tweaking the script and casting for male characters in the female-led spy thriller.



THREADS
355 (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71005-355)
Where in the world is Fan Bingbing? (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70896-Where-in-the-world-is-Fan-Bingbing)

[GeneChing]

ASIA APRIL 26, 2019 12:35AM PT
Fan Bingbing Starts to Re-Emerge Months After Tax Scandal (https://variety.com/2019/film/news/fan-bingbing-tax-comeback-355-jessica-chastain-1203198590/)
By REBECCA DAVIS

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/fan-bingbing.jpg?w=1000&h=563&crop=1
CREDIT: ALVARO BARRIENTOS/AP/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK

Half a year after she was found guilty of tax fraud and disappeared from the public eye, Chinese superstar Fan Bingbing has begun to signal her comeback, attending a gala event and launching her own beauty product on social media this week.

The 37-year-old actress unexpectedly hit the red carpet in Beijing on Monday at a ninth-anniversary event for streaming giant iQiyi, though she arrived late and didn’t answer media questions. “iQiyi hosted a closed-door event of entertainment professionals, unrelated to any specific projects,” the company told Variety in response to a query about Fan’s attendance.

Industry watchers saw her presence as an attempt to assess public reception of her re-emergence months after she issued a groveling public apology and was ordered to pay more than $100 million in penalties and back taxes. Reactions on social media to her re-appearance suggest that Fan could face a tough road back to public favor.

At the iQiyi event, she wore what is assumed to be sponsored luxury clothing – an Alexander McQueen suit, a Louis Vuitton handbag, and De Beers jewelry – in a sign that the fashion world, at least, appears ready to forgive. (Fan was the public face of Louis Vuitton and De Beers for years before her fall from grace.) A selfie of the star holding up a V-for-victory hand gesture in the company of Yue Hua Entertainment CEO Du Hua has made the rounds online. She herself posted her red-carpet photos on her Instagram account, which has lain more or less dormant since last May.

Commenting on the post, Jessica Chastain wrote “Beautiful” with a heart emoji. Chastain is set to begin shooting this year alongside Fan, Lupita Nyong’o, Penelope Cruz and Marion Cotillard in the all-woman spy thriller “355,” directed by Simon Kinberg, a film whose fate had been uncertain in the wake of the Fan’s fall from grace.

The response in Fan’s home country, whose highly censored online space is often swept up in fits of nationalism, has been much frostier, with many netizens apparently unwilling to forgive and forget.

Under the top news story about her iQiyi appearance on China’s Twitter-like Weibo platform, amidst the comments extolling her beauty, hundreds of thousands had posted and liked vitriolic retorts, many calling her a thick-skinned liar.

“So we’re supposed to pretend that nothing happened?” wrote one commenter, while another added sarcastically: “It’s so great to be an artist in China – Chinese people apparently only have a three second-long memory.”

Another said of her tax evasion: “If an act is wrong, even if thousands upon thousands of people are doing the same thing, it’s still wrong.”

On Wednesday, her beauty brand Fan Beauty announced the launch of a “seagrape deep hydrating water gel” face mask, which goes on sale in Hong Kong on Friday. Included was a promotional video message from the actress.

Last month, Fan was photographed at the opening of a new beauty salon in central Beijing. Although the designer Zhang Shuai publicly stated that it was his business venture, Chinese databases show that Fan’s mother holds 98% of shares and her father the other 2%.

Membership cards begin at RMB50,000 ($7,400) and go up to RMB1 million ($148,000), leaked photos circulating online showed.

Since last fall, Fan has posted only a few times on either Chinese or foreign social media: wishing fans a happy lunar new year in February on Instagram (a platform blocked in China), giving a shout-out to Chinese film “The Crossing” in March, and honoring firefighters who battled a big forest fire in the southwestern province of Sichuan in April.

Tempted to search for that “seagrape deep hydrating water gel” promo vid...

[GeneChing]

If Fan is rebounding, I'm easy to find.


Chinese Star Fan Bingbing Calls Off Engagement After Tax Scandal (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/fan-bingbing-calls-engagement-tax-scandal-1221645)
10:10 PM PDT 6/27/2019 by Patrick Brzeski

https://cdn1.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/landscape_928x523/2018/10/fan_bingbing.jpg
George Pimentel/WireImage
Fan Bingbing

The actress shared the news of her split from actor Li Chen in a social media post, writing, "In one's lifetime, there are many goodbyes...."
Fan Bingbing, China's highest-paid actress who mysteriously went missing last year amid a tax scandal, has split from her fiance, actor Li Chen.

Fan announced her breakup with Li late Thursday in a short message posted to her official page on Weibo, China's popular Twitter-like service.

"In one's lifetime, there are many goodbyes," she said. "Thank you for everything you have given me — the support and love — along the way. Thank you for your care and love in the future."

She added, "We will not be an 'us' anymore, but we are still us."

"Fan Bingbing and Li Chen break up" has been the leading trending item on Weibo since Fan went public with the split.

Fan and Li met while working together on the hit Chinese period drama The Empress of China, which aired in 2014. They became engaged in September 2017, after Li, 40, proposed to Fan at her birthday party.

Fan, 37, has been one of China's most recognizable stars for over a decade, and she became familiar to international moviegoers thanks to a role as Blink in the X-Men franchise. As much a fashion icon as an actress, she also was the go-to face for luxury endorsements in China, which helped propel her to the very top of China's list of highest-paid celebrities.

The past year has been epically challenging for the actress though. She made headlines around the world in mid-2018 thanks to a very public tax evasion scandal, which resulted in a months-long disappearance from public view. It later emerged that she had been detained and interrogated by Chinese authorities at a remote location. Fan eventually emerged in October to issue a groveling — seemingly coerced — apology, while also agreeing to pay fines and back taxes allegedly totaling around $100 million.

Fan has seen most of her Chinese film projects put on hold in the wake of her tax problems. It now appears likely that her first attempt at a comeback will come courtesy of Hollywood. In the months prior to her scandal, Fan signed on to star opposite Jessica Chastain, Marion Cotillard, Lupita Nyong'o and Penélope Cruz in the spy thriller 355, produced by FilmNation and distributed in the U.S. by Universal. Following her disappearance and public humbling, her role — and the project overall — was thought to be in jeopardy, especially once Chinese studio Huayi Brothers Media stepped back from a $20 million deal for the Middle Kingdom distribution rights to the title.

During Cannes, however, Chinese film finance company Golden Title stepped in to replace Huayi Brothers on 355. The film is scheduled to begin shooting in Paris in early July.

Fan's former fiance, Li, has suffered some career turbulence of his own in recent months. Best known for his appearance in Feng Xiaogang's 2010 blockbuster Aftershock and several popular TV series (Beijing Love Story and The Good Fellas), he was next set to star in Huayi Brothers' war epic The Eight Hundred, which was tipped to become one China's biggest hits of the summer. The film's release plans were abruptly scrapped last week under suspected censorship pressure from Beijing.

Li also made his directorial debut in 2017 with the military action film Sky Hunter, which co-starred Fan but disappointed both critically and commercially, earning about $47 million from a production budget of over $30 million.

THREADS
Where in the world is Fan Bingbing? (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70896-Where-in-the-world-is-Fan-Bingbing)
355 (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71005-355)

[GeneChing]

Who is Fan Chengcheng? New face of Fenty Beauty in China and Fan Bingbing’s little brother (https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/fashion-beauty/article/3027056/who-fan-chengcheng-new-face-fenty-beauty-china-and-fan)
Recently named the face of Rihanna’s beauty line in Greater China, Fan Chengcheng has earned a string of luxury brand endorsements in the past year
One of a group of emerging stars dubbed ‘little fresh meat’, the singer and model is among the most in-demand young celebrities in East Asia
Lauren James
Published: 5:00pm, 15 Sep, 2019

https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/1200x800/public/d8/images/methode/2019/09/13/51716db8-d533-11e9-a556-d14d94601503_image_hires_115109.jpg?itok=3ILkTrTX&v=1568346678
Fan Chengcheng in a promotional shot for French jewellery brand Fred. The teenager has picked up a number of brand endorsements and accolades in the past 12 months.

Fan Chengcheng, the younger brother of Chinese megastar Fan Bingbing, has described himself as “very happy” to have been named the face of Fenty Beauty in Greater China.
His affiliation with the company was only announced last week, but the 19-year-old singer and model – a member of pop groups Nex7 and Nine Percent (in which he is known as “Adam”) – has already featured in a video campaign for the brand, founded by pop star Rihanna in 2017.
A clip released by Fenty Beauty shows Fan waking up, showering, hopping into a car and heading to perform at a nightclub to an audience of women, who are pictured getting ready for the gig with Fenty products. In another video, this time posted on social media app Tik Tok, he demonstrates the brand’s highlighter by flicking it at the camera.
Fan is following in the footsteps of Naomi Wang Ju – dubbed “China’s Beyoncé” – who was announced as the brand’s first spokesman for China earlier this summer.


𝚔𝚊𝚖𝚒
@gonrises
fine i understood m putting my fenty foundation tomorrow u got me fan chengcheng

Embedded video
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8:22 PM - Sep 8, 2019
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The cruelty-free brand has earned praise for its range of foundation shades and refusal to test on animals; in China it sells products through online retailer Tmall, which ships items from outside the country to circumvent the law that requires all cosmetics sold there to be tested on animals. (Tmall is a unit of Alibaba, which owns the South China Morning Post.)

Fenty is expanding to several Asian markets, including South Korea, where the brand has hinted at a collaboration with K-pop singer Kai.

https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/d8/images/methode/2019/09/13/a27ef104-d528-11e9-a556-d14d94601503_972x_115109.JPG
Fan Chengcheng, the younger brother of actress Fan Bingbing, has enjoyed a rapid rise in China since his appearance on a TV talent show in 2018. Photo: Weibo

“The increasing demand for make-up among young Chinese consumers, a high sensitivity towards social media and a preference for online shopping has pushed Fenty Beauty into the Chinese market,” a spokesman for Fenty Beauty’s Tmall shop told Chinese newspaper Global Times last week.
Fan, a talented singer and rapper, is showbiz-savvy. In 2018 he was catapulted to fame at the age of 17 after becoming one of the final nine contestants on the hit Chinese television talent show Idol Producer. In November, he wrote the Nine Percent song I’m Here, which sold more than a million copies in its first five minutes of release.
From then on, he began collecting a string of accolades, which so far have included being honoured as the “most influential fashion male celebrity of the year” at the Sohu Fashion Awards in Beijing.

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Fan Chengcheng models a Versace look.

The exposure won him attention from luxury fashion brands Louis Vuitton and Loewe, and he soon found himself tagged by Chinese internet users “little fresh meat” – a term used to describe young, attractive, up-and-coming male celebrities.
In a market where celebrity endorsement has a big influence on retail sales, Fan and other “little fresh meat” stars, including rapper Kris Wu, found themselves bombarded by brands looking to tap their large social media followings and ability to reach young, mostly female consumers.
Adding to an already impressive roster of brand signings, Fan was also revealed earlier this year as the first China spokesman for French jewellery retailer Fred, which praised his “talent as a composer” and “enthusiasm towards life”.
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Fan Chengcheng models jewellery by Fred. The French brand announced him as its first China brand spokesman this year.

As the beauty industry shifts towards inclusivity and embraces the gender spectrum in its marketing, Fenty Beauty is one of several brands to actively promote its products to a male audience, posting tutorials aimed at men and selling a “Gentlemen’s Fenty face” kit, which includes foundation and oil-blotting tools.
Although “little fresh meat” are noted for their feminine features and personalities, the brand does not appear to have lined up Fan to model its products on his own skin. In a promotional image, he is shown brandishing a tube of crimson lipstick, but does not wear any.
Fans of the singer have flooded Weibo, China’s Twitter, with messages applauding the brand for its newest hire and urging others to buy Fenty Beauty products. “Thank you very much for choosing Fan Chengcheng as the brand spokesperson! A great honour indeed!” one fan wrote. Another posted: “I don’t know why, but I suddenly need to buy buy buy!”

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Fan Chengcheng is promoting Fenty Beauty lipstick, but isn’t shown using it himself. Photo: courtesy of Weibo

Fan is 19 years younger than his sister, and his family have long fought off rumours that he is Fan Bingbing’s son, not her brother. The actress has addressed the gossip in interviews, claiming she was the one to convince her mother to keep the child and that they had to pay a fine due to China’s one-child policy.
Fan Chengcheng’s nascent career seems not to have been affected by his house arrest in 2018, along with his sister, in connection with her tax evasion, a scandal that saw several luxury brands terminate their contracts with her. He is quickly emerging as one of the most in-demand young faces in East Asia.
Rihanna, through her own newly created Weibo page, heralded the arrival of her brand’s newest spokesman, saying: “Welcome to the Fenty Beauty Global Family!!”

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[GeneChing]

Exclusive | ‘It’s like a restart for me’: Chinese actress Fan Bingbing on relaunching her career in Green Night after tax scandal, and why staying grounded is ‘important’ (https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3211810/its-restart-me-chinese-actress-fan-bingbing-relaunching-her-career-green-night-after-tax-scandal-and?utm_content=article&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR06Ny1VVxhPPFL9C00y-YJGYWhtxZcu95fft8K4l23Ay97ONKc2R-oOK8I#Echobox=1677626605)
Fan was at the Berlin film festival promoting new film Green Night, and revealed ‘the biggest challenge’ was returning to acting after her enforced absence
The X-Men star also talked about why staying humble helps her perform, how shooting in Hollywood and China is different and her plans for more films in English

James Mottram
Published: 7:15am, 1 Mar, 2023

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Chinese star Fan Bingbing opened up at this year’s Berlin film festival about returning to the screen after a long hiatus following a tax scandal in 2018, and her plans to do more English-language films. Photo: Getty
In a first-floor corridor of the Grand Hyatt Berlin hotel, Fan Bingbing is applying her own make-up, holding up a small compact mirror and tilting her head backwards as she touches up her mascara.
Only one room has been assigned for publicity purposes for her new movie Green Night, which has just been unveiled in the Panorama strand of this year’s Berlin International Film Festival. And for the moment, the director of the film, Han Shuai, is doing a TV interview in there.
Fan, however, doesn’t seem to care about the makeshift nature of her makeover or the fact that, in a minute or so, we’ll be chatting on two stools in the corner of said corridor, as festivalgoers walk past, blithely unaware of who is sitting there.
A superstar in China following her appearance in films like Cell Phone and I Am Not Madame Bovary, the 41-year-old has already made headway in Hollywood, appearing in films such as X-Men: Days of Future Past and recent all-female action movie The 355.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zu_u8l-v018
It’s surprising, then, how low-key she is in person.
Today she’s wearing a light-pink crochet jumper with tassels, white sneakers and dark jeans bedecked with glitter. It’s a cute outfit, but down to earth. There’s no sign of any expensive designer wear, and she isn’t surrounded by a huge entourage.
Is she always this grounded? “For me, I really feel it’s important to maintain this sort of life,” she tells the Post in an interview, “because then you can see the details of real people, in real life, and then I can bring those emotions and experiences into acting. So it’s really helpful for me to stay grounded.”
Her director, back at the festival for the first time since 2020 with her film Summer Blur, explains that this is simply how Fan is. “Actually, she’s very straightforward and frank rather than a ‘star star’,” she says. “She’s very warm with the crew. And she’s a human being rather than an idol.
“She had a very good relationship with other members in the crew on [the] set [of Green Night].”

It’s quite cruel on you if you don’t act for five years, because I love performing
Fan Bingbing
It is 16 years since Fan was last at the Berlin festival with her 2007 film Lost in Beijing, but the big point here is that the actress is back at all – after a protracted hiatus.
As most followers of Fan will know (and she has a lot; 3.8 million on Instagram to be precise), it’s been a trying time for the actress.
In July 2018, she disappeared from public view and social media, sparking rumours that she had fled China, was in jail or under house arrest. Three months later it was revealed that she had been fined for tax evasion. She and her companies were ordered to pay about 880 million yuan (US$129 million) in fines.
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Fan in a still from Green Night. Photo: Demei
She later issued a statement on Chinese microblogging platform Weibo apologising for her actions which read in part: “Without the good policies of the Communist Party and the state, without the people’s love and care, there would be no Fan Bingbing.”
Whatever happened then, she is ready to put it behind her. Shortly after we meet in Berlin at a press conference for Green Night, a reporter asks her to reflect on that period of her life.
While the moderator tried to steer it back to the film to help her evade a potentially awkward question, Fan answered with confidence.
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Fan (second from left) with co-star Lee Joo-young (left), and director and screenwriter Han Shuai (second from right) at a press conference at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival. Photo: Reuters
“I was at home, I was dealing with some things. But, you know, everybody’s life has highs and lows. And when you reach a low, you steadily, gradually climb back up again. And it’s a tough process.
“But you learn a lot of new things at the same time, and you learn a lot about the world, a lot about people. And for me, it was a very good experience in retrospect … and everything’s fine with me now.”
In some respects, it’s an answer that says very little about the realities behind those lows, although it’s clear how delighted she is to be back. continued next post

[GeneChing]

Acting is something that I’ll probably be doing for my whole life. I’m going to stick at it.
Fan Bingbing
In Green Night, the actress plays Jin Xia, a Chinese immigrant living in Korea with an abusive, fundamentalist Christian husband.
Working as an airport security official, she meets a mysterious green-haired woman (Lee Joo-young from the 2022 Korean hit drama Broker), who is a drug mule. Before long, the two end up on a 24-hour mad dash through Seoul as they make a break for freedom.
The film has already drawn comparisons to Ridley Scott’s Thelma & Louise for its feminist slant, as two women attempt to find agency in a male-dominated world.
“She always had this longing in her heart to get out and to be free and do something crazy,” says Fan of her character, “but she just didn’t have that match to set it off. Right? So she was waiting for that moment.
“And the green-haired girl was that thing that really set her off. So she was able to let go and escape her relationship and her boring job.”
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Fan in a still from Green Night. Photo: Demei
It’s clearly been a rejuvenating experience for Fan, especially given she’s working with a female director, female producer and female co-star.
“I felt there was a lot of unspoken understanding between us and a type of warmth that we were able to share because we were all female. Not to say anything against men, but just to say that there was this kind of camaraderie between us because we were an all-female team,” she says.
“Maybe issues that women have, men don’t really understand that well … so we felt that we really got each other.”
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Fan (left), with Green Night co-star Lee Joo-young (right) and director and screenwriter Han Shuai at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival. Photo: Reuters
In the film, the two main characters find solace in each other’s arms in a love scene that might shock some of Fan’s more conservative fans. The men don’t come out of the film well, we put it to the actress. The green-haired girl’s paymaster, for example, is a deaf-mute sadist.
“We don’t emphasise the badness of the males specifically,” Fan says, “but actually just how the women are together … that warmth between them and that understanding. It helped them rely on each other.”
Green Night might seem like a rather small project for an actress who, between 2013 and 2017, was ranked the highest-paid person on the Forbes China Celebrity 100 rich list.
In that time she ran her own company, Fan Bingbing Studio, became an ambassador for designer fashion brands such as Montblanc and De Beers, and launched her own skincare brand, Fan Beauty Secret.
It’s little wonder Time magazine put her on its 100 Most Influential People list in 2017 (“a woman who knows her own strength,” remarked fashion designer Diane Von Furstenberg. “She is the woman she wants to be”).
This comeback feels like baby steps for Fan, who is still in the process of rescuing her reputation. As Fan noted at her Berlin press conference, “the biggest challenge was basically that I haven’t acted for five years.”
By and large it is true she has not acted since the tax issue came to light; she’s obviously discounting The 355 (as one should – it was terrible), which was mostly shot in 2019. Fan said: “It’s quite cruel on you if you don’t act for five years, because I love performing."
On the surface, easing her way back into Asian cinema via a film that deals with the Chinese-Korean immigrant crossover seems like a smart move.
Will she choose another English-language project any time soon? “Yes, we’re reviewing some screenplays right now,” she says. “So maybe my English will get better and better.”
Perhaps she could return as Blink, her X-Men character who was capable of teleportation? Now Disney controls the rights to Marvel’s mutant heroes, there’s every chance they will be rebooted in another movie series.
“I would definitely love to reprise my role as Blink,” she says. “Her abilities were really cool!”
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Fan as Blink in a still from X-Men: Days of Future Past. Photo: 20th Century Fox
Fan is accustomed to appearing in Chinese epics, such as Chen Kaige’s 2010 historical tale Sacrifice, so did it feel different to be in a blockbuster like X-Men: Days of Future Past?
“Hollywood is so developed and they really know every single minute what they’re going to do on set and what you have to be doing,” Fan says. “And [they’re] very on track and on top of things. It was different from shooting in China, but I was able to learn a lot from that experience.”
Her Green Night director feels like this is a different Fan that we’re seeing now, a more seasoned performer. “I think she’s become a more mature and grown-up woman,” Han says.
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Fan on the red carpet at the Berlin International Film Festival. Photo: AFP
Perhaps the humbling experience she faced back in 2018 has changed her. Certainly, the girl in the corridor opposite this writer has no airs and graces about her. She is just happy to be back.
“It’s like a restart for me,” she says. “Acting is something that I’ll probably be doing for my whole life. I’m going to stick at it.”
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James Mottram
James Mottram is a film critic and journalist based in London. As well as writing for the SCMP for over 10 years, he’s also written a number of books on cinema including The Sundance Kids, The Making of Memento and Die Hard: The Ultimate Visual History. Bingbing is back!

[GeneChing]

Chinese film star Fan Bingbing makes rare appearance at the Oscars (https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/3213291/chinese-film-star-fan-bingbing-makes-rare-appearance-oscars-los-angeles?utm_content=article&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR36uQLzI6R47Q0fYCMIqo5eKWWN00Y03MDy3y5co LFb2PmaQgNrPirIHpA#Echobox=1678661254)
Fan was ordered to pay US$130 million in taxes and penalties by the Chinese government in 2018 and has largely disappeared from public view
Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s indie hit Anything Everywhere All at Once has 11 nominations, including nods for Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan

Published: 6:40am, 13 Mar, 2023

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China’s Fan Bingbing arrives at the Oscars in Los Angeles on Sunday. Photo: AP
Disgraced Chinese actress Fan Bingbing, who appeared in X-Men films before disappearing amid a tax case in China, is at the Oscars.
Fan was becoming a crossover star with roles lined up in a Bruce Willis film and appeared in a pair of films based on Marvel Comics characters before she was ordered to pay US$130 million in taxes and penalties by the Chinese government in 2018.
Before the fine was levied, Fan went dark on social media, her management offices closed and she largely disappeared from public view.
Fan has had a few recent credits, including the spy thriller The 355, which was released in 2022.
She has re-emerged this year, appearing at the Berlin Film Festival last month with a new film, Green Night.
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Will Smith, right, hits presenter Chris Rock on stage at the Oscars in March last year, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. Photo: AP
Last year’s Oscars ceremony was arguably eclipsed by Will Smith, who strode on stage and slapped Chris Rock in the face over a comment Rock had made about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, in his speech.
Jimmy Kimmel, the show’s first solo emcee in five years, is hosting for the third time. The late-night comedian has promised to make some jokes about The Slap; it would be “ridiculous” not to, he said.
Bill Kramer, chief executive of the film academy, has said that it was important, given what happened last year, to have “a host in place who can really pivot and manage those moments.”
“Nobody got hit when I hosted the show,” Kimmel boasted, tongue in cheek, on Good Morning America on Thursday. “Everybody was well-behaved at my Oscars.”
Kimmel will preside over a ceremony that could see big wins for the best-picture favourite, Everything Everywhere All at Once. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s action-comedy indie hit comes in with a leading 11 nominations, including nods for Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan.
Producers are giving some aspects of the Oscars a makeover. The carpet is champagne-coloured, not red. The broadcast has been planned to be more interactive than ever.
There were surprises before the show even got started. Just days after producers had said Lady Gaga would not be performing her nominated song Hold My Hand from Top Gun: Maverick, a person close to the production with knowledge of the performance confirmed on Sunday afternoon that the pop superstar would perform, after all.
And presenter Glenn Close told Associated Press that she would no longer present at the show because she had tested positive for Covid-19.
But the academy, still trying to find its footing after several years of pandemic and ratings struggles, is also hoping for a smoother ride than last year. A crisis management team has been created to help better respond to surprises. The academy has called its response to Smith’s actions last year “inadequate.”
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Harry Shum Jnr, whose mother is from Hong Kong and whose father is from Guangzhou, arrives at the Oscars on Sunday at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. Shum Jnr plays Chad in Everything Everywhere All at Once. Photo: Invision / AP
Neither Rock, who recently made his most forceful statement about the incident in a live special, nor Smith, who’s been banned by the academy for 10 years, are expected to attend.
The Academy Awards will instead attempt to recapture some of its old lustre. One thing working in its favour: This year’s best picture field is stacked with blockbusters. Ratings usually go up when the nominees are more popular, which certainly goes for Top Gun: Maverick, Avatar: The Way of Water and, to a lesser extent, Elvis and Everything Everywhere All at Once.
But the late-breaking contender that may fare well in the technical categories – where bigger films often reign – is Netflix’s top nominee this year: the German WWI epic All Quiet on the Western Front. It is up for nine awards, tied for second most with the Irish dark comedy The Banshees of Inisherin. Netflix’s Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio also looks like a shoo-in for best animated film.
The awards will also have some star wattage in the musical performances. Fresh off her Super Bowl performance, Rihanna will perform her Oscar-nominated song, Lift Me Up, from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. This Is Life, from Everything Everywhere All at Once will be sung by David Byrne and supporting actress nominee Stephanie Hsu with the band Son Lux. Rahul Sipligunj and Kaala Bhairava will perform Naatu Naatu from the Indian action epic RRR. Lenny Kravitz will perform during the In Memoriam tribute.
Last year, Apple TV’s CODA became the first streaming film to win best picture. But this year, nine of the 10 best picture nominees were theatrical releases. After the film business cratered during the pandemic, moviegoing recovered to about 67 per cent of pre-pandemic levels. But it was an up and down year, full of smash hits and anxiety-inducing lulls in cinemas.
At the same time, the rush to streaming encountered new setbacks as studios questioned long-term profitability and re-examined their release strategies. This year, ticket sales have been strong thanks to releases such as Creed III and Cocaine Bear. But there remain storm clouds on the horizon.
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Chinese-American veteran actor James Hong, part of the Everything Anywhere All at Once cast, with April Hong at the Oscars in Los Angeles on Sunday. Photo: Invision / AP
The Writers Guild and the major studios are set to begin contract negotiations March 20, a looming battle that has much of the industry girding for the possibility of a work stoppage throughout film and television.
The Oscars, meanwhile, are trying to reestablish their position as the premier award show. Last year’s telecast drew 16.6 million viewers, a 58 per cent increase from the scaled-down 2021 edition, watched by a record low 10.5 million.
Usually, the previous year’s acting winners present the awards for best actor and best actress. But that will not be the case this time. Who will replace Smith in presenting best actress is just one of the questions heading into the ceremony.

Where-in-the-world-is-Fan-Bingbing (https://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70896-Where-in-the-world-is-Fan-Bingbing)
The-Academy-Awards (https://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?20798-The-Academy-Awards)
Everything-Everywhere-All-At-Once (https://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?72284-Everything-Everywhere-All-At-Once)