Chinese actress Fan Bingbing: disappearance last year for tax evasion ‘has made me calm down’
The 37-year-old actress – who has starred in dozens of Chinese films, as well the Hollywood blockbusters such as 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past and Iron Man 3 – was not seen in public from July to October last year as provincial authorities investigated her for tax evasion.
It may be a trough I encountered in my life or in my work, but this trough is actually a good thing. It has made me calm down and think seriously about what I want to do in my future life.
Authorities found that she and her companies had avoided paying 248 million yuan (US$34 million) in taxes.
Fan, who used to share minute details of her life to her millions of social media followers, has kept a low profile ever since, breaking her silence from time to time only to praise the Chinese state.
In an interview with The New York Times, published on Saturday, Fan once again praised the Chinese state, and even appeared to thank the government for helping her disappearance.
It appears to be her first interview with Western media since she went missing.
“It may be a trough I encountered in my life or in my work, but this trough is actually a good thing,” she told the Times. “It has made me calm down and think seriously about what I want to do in my future life.
“No one can have smooth sailing throughout the journey,” she added, referring to her acting career.
The Times added that she spoke with “a calm – if perhaps practised – resignation”.
Many people with whom she was working – including her manager at the time – were arrested, the Times reported.
During those four months she was missing, Fan was held under house arrest, although nobody knew it at the time. The South China Morning Post reported that she had been detained in a luxury “holiday resort” in the coastal province of Jiangsu, where authorities were investigating her case.
Fan Bingbing, Communist Party cheerleader?
Immediately after her charges and fine were announced, Fan issued an apology to the Chinese government, writing on the microblogging site Weibo: “For a while, due to my not understanding the relationship between benefits of the country, society, and individual, I and others took advantage of a ‘split contract’ to avoid tax problems, and I am deeply ashamed.
“Without the Party and country's good policies, without the love of the people, there would be no Fan Bingbing,” she added.
Without the Party and country's good policies, without the love of the people, there would be no Fan Bingbing
A month later, she republished a map on Weibo that asserted China's controversial claims to the South China Sea and Taiwan.
Fan's high-profile disappearance prompted many people in China's film industry to pay back any outstanding taxes, and also served as a warning to anyone who dared defy China’s authority.
China’s message is that “nobody is too high, nobody is above, nobody can escape government scrutiny”, Roderic Wye, a former diplomat at the British Embassy in Beijing, told Business Insider last year.
Fan's humbling was “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”, Wye said.
Last month Fan appeared in a teaser for 355, an action film produced by American actress Jessica Chastain about female spies from around the world.
The second world war-set blockbuster Air Strike, starring Bruce Willis and co-starring Fan was scrapped last year in the wake of the tax scandal surrounding the Chinese actress.
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This article originally appeared on Business Insider.
Star of Hollywood blockbusters like Iron Man 3 was placed under house arrest for four months while being investigated for not paying US$34 million in taxes