China’s Celebrity Culture Is Raucous. The Authorities Want to Change That.

For many brands, more than half of their marketing budget is now devoted to online celebrities, according to Mark Tanner, the managing director at China Skinny, a marketing and research agency based in Shanghai.

“You’ve got this really lonely generation, and they find companionship through these virtual relationships. That has contributed to it,” he said. “From a branding perspective, you can’t underestimate the power of it. These fans are buying every product that their idols are endorsing, so all you need to do is get some form of ambassadorship.”

The move to clean up unruly fan clubs and discipline celebrities is the latest example of the increasingly assertive role that China’s governing Communist Party under Xi Jinping, an authoritarian leader, wants to take in regulating culture. Mr. Xi said in 2014 that art and culture should be made in the service of the people, and in the years since, the entertainment industry has emerged as an ideological battleground, whether it is in the censorship of themes deemed pernicious or in reining in celebrity influence.

The crackdown on celebrities follows recent regulatory action against some of China’s biggest tech companies and its private tutoring industry. Just as Beijing has reined in other industries that were long given wide berths, regulation is beginning to catch up to China’s online fan culture, said Hung Huang, a popular blogger and magazine publisher in Beijing.

“I think the problems facing China and abroad are the same — that is, the progress of its technology has surpassed it,” Ms. Hung said. “Law enforcement procedures cannot keep up with the changes in new technologies. So the fan clubs are indeed a new technology and a little monster created by social media.”

The crackdown on fan clubs is a reversal of Beijing’s view of the industry only a year ago. State media outlets used to praise fan culture for promoting spontaneous “positive energy,” citing a fan club in 2019 that was created around a fictitious character who came to the defense of Beijing’s policies during the protests in Hong Kong.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/27/business/media/china-celebrity-culture.html