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Why is the Communist Party clamping down on China's biggest stars and fan clubs?



The crackdown came quickly and sweepingly, wiping out some of China's biggest stars and fan clubs in a matter of days.To get more chinese entertainment news, you can visit shine news official website.

Over the past week, China's entertainment industry has become the latest to fall into the crosshairs of the ruling Communist Party, following Xi Jinping's clampdown on political dissent, social activism, ideological liberalism and private businesses.
Zhao Wei, one of China's most prominent actresses, saw her presence mostly scrubbed from the country's internet overnight. Her fan page on Weibo, China's heavily censored version of Twitter, was shut down. Movies and television shows she starred in -- some going as far back as two decades ago -- were taken off streaming platforms, with her name also removed from the cast lists.
Broadcasters and video sites also removed the works of Zheng Shuang, another top Chinese actress who was fined $46 million for tax evasion on Friday. Zheng had been caught in a surrogacy scandal earlier this year, after her estranged partner accused her of abandoning their two babies in the United States.
The erasure came as a list of "misbehaving celebrities" reportedly blacklisted by China's broadcast authorities circulated on social media on Thursday. Zhao and Zheng were both on the list, as well as Chinese Canadian pop star Kris Wu, who was arrested on suspicion of rape this month. It was not immediately clear why Zhao was targeted. CNN has reached out to her agent for comment.
While individual Chinese celebrities have been targeted by the government before, the latest crackdown is wider in scope and harsher in severity, with their presence mostly wiped clean from the country's internet -- so complete is their erasure, it has been likened by fans online to the formation of a black hole following the collapse of a star.
Authorities also took aim at celebrity fan culture popular among China's youth. On Friday, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) announced 10 measures to "clean up" what it called the "chaos" of celebrity fan clubs, including banning any attempt to rank celebrities based on popularity, and tightening regulations around talent agencies and fan club accounts. A day earlier, popular video platform iQiyi canceled all idol talent shows, calling them "unhealthy."
On Chinese social media, some comments said the crackdown was reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution, a decade of political and social turmoil between 1966 and 1976 during which arts and culture were restricted to promoting party propaganda.
The Communist Party, which views popular culture as a key ideological battleground, has long kept the entertainment sector on a tight leash with stringent censorship. But it has also encouraged its growth, supporting domestic films and shows intended to help win the Chinese public over from Hollywood and other foreign productions.
But under Xi, the party has grown ever more obsessed with ideological and cultural control. The dazzle of stardom and the frenzy of fandom are increasingly viewed as a dangerous, pernicious influence -- especially on the country's youth.
For decades, robust economic growth has been a key pillar of legitimacy for the party. As the Chinese economy slows, Xi has invoked the need for "common prosperity" and pledged to redistribute wealth, with high-earning celebrities and business tycoons among the first to bear the brunt.
The sky-high income of some A-list celebrities is a glaring reminder of China's gaping wealth gap. Zheng was reportedly paid more than $24 million for two and a half months of filming for a romantic drama, earning an average daily wage of more than $300,000. Last year, by way of comparison, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang revealed that more than 600 million Chinese were earning barely $140 per month.