FANS OF HUO ZUN were dismayed in August when images of the pop star were blurred out during a performance on “Call Me By Fire”, a popular Chinese reality show. Mr Huo’s hands were visible during some sequences. But when he came into the frame it appeared as if he was standing in a puff of smoke enveloping his body. “Fogging”, as it is known, has become a common on the Chinese internet in recent years. Censorship rules require actors who have committed crimes be blurred out, or completely erased when possible.
Mr Huo’s offence was a public breakup with his girlfriend earlier in the year. He had violated no law. But that was enough for the government to deem him an unsavoury character, unfit to appear in public. Internet users are increasingly affected by a spurt of Communist Party cancel culture targeting ever more innocuous behaviour. The broad aim of the campaign, which has been going on for the past six months, is to cleanse Chinese cyberspace of entertainment at odds with socialist values.
There appear to be two targets. The first is a business model with 4.9trn ($767bn) of annual revenues, the fan economy, that has sprung up around internet celebrities, fan groups and streaming platforms. In the most recent set of rules, issued in late November, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said that brand campaigns featuring celebrities will be allowed to show advertisements only in designated ad spaces. And from now on, China’s huge fan groups, often with millions of fans apiece, are to come under close monitoring by the authorities.
To aid the crackdown the CAC has been increasing its powers in recent months. It is now an investor in several internet firms, including a subsidiary of ByteDance, and Kuaishou, a short-video app. Further new regulations suggest that its objective is to stop China’s internet groups using highly-stimulating content to ramp up internet traffic, which is the driving force behind internet platforms’ ad revenues and live-streaming e-commerce. The latter was worth 1.2trn yuan last year, an 197% increase from the year before.
The second target of the CAC’s campaign is celebrity itself. The new rules create an official blacklist of celebrities that bans all mention of the names included. This will formalise the treatment that Mr Huo and many other stars have received after committing social improprieties or wrongdoing such as tax evasion. Permanent cancellation is becoming part of China’s entertainment landscape. On November 23rd the China Association of Performing Arts published a list of 88 internet celebrities who had committed some form of transgression. A common offence was showing support for Kris Wu, arrested this year on suspicion of rape. Weibo, a Twitter-like service, was forced to ban 145 celebrity accounts in August for infractions such as “insulting and slandering martyrs and inciting illegal gatherings”.
The tightening grip is ostensibly part of President Xi Jinping’s “common prosperity” initiative. It is an attempt to make the country more equitable after years of rapid growth that created a vast digital economy dominated by several internet platforms, in particular e-commerce giant Alibaba and gaming and social-media group Tencent. Over the past year Mr Xi has made clear his plan to take control of the internet industry. The entertainment crackdown under way stems from the government’s desire to cap the “absurd financial gains” made by internet celebrities, says Enchi Chang, a digital marketing specialist.
Yet there is also a more political motivation. China’s Communist Party has grown increasingly uncomfortable with the ability of huge internet stars and their fans to communicate beyond the scope of its control. Take, for example, the country’s massive fan groups. These have in recent years taken up political causes, such as defending Hong Kong from anti-government protesters. Collective action, more than criticism, is something the party fears and suppresses actively, says Jonathan Sullivan of the University of Nottingham. “The potential for large groups of people acting in concert is a constant concern,” he says.
The upending of celebrity culture will have a big impact on China’s internet groups. The country’s fan economy, which combines entertainment and consumption, was expected to be worth about $1trn by 2023. This income is shared across a wide range of companies, advertisers, consumer brands and individual celebrities. If the new advertising rules are strictly enforced, companies such as Kuaishou and Bilibili, a video-streaming service, will be hit. Both groups enjoyed a rapid rise in their ad revenues last year, when total online ad revenues in China hit 767bn yuan.
How will the companies respond? The most outrageous internet stunts, attracting millions of viewers and generating strong e-commerce sales, have become an increasingly important business for groups such as ByteDance and Kuaishou. Now they will probably block some of the most problematic content, says an industry executive. One manager at an online platform says companies will move away from hiring big stars for particular performances. Internet traffic will fall.
A purge on programming is already under way. For example iQiYi, China’s Netflix, said in August that it will no longer feature talent shows or venues where fans can vote for stars, calling them an unhealthy trend despite their wild popularity. The company’s New York-listed shares have tumbled by almost 60% since mid-year when the campaign against entertainment began to take shape. Douyin, Weibo, Kuaishou and other platforms have already shut down their celebrity-ranking lists, venues where fans often paid to buy products in order to support their favourite stars.
One senior executive at an internet group notes that the government’s moves do command significant public support. Many parents in China agree with the party’s view of online entertainment as vacuous, and even dangerous for young people. Regulators around the world are grappling with how to deal with potentially harmful internet content. But Mr Xi’s drive for a more orderly internet is as extreme as it is swift. Mr Huo’s millions of fans will find few opportunities to voice their opposition to watching their favourite star disappear into a censorious mist.
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Communist Party cancel culture targets internet celebrities - The Economist
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