Fallen idols: Kris Wu and China’s crackdown on zealous fans
- Chinese authorities have spent the last two months trying to rein in hugely influential fan clubs and social media platforms
- The sector is a big business and one of the few outlets left for public participation and expression, analysts say
“Ten years of my youth is gone,” the 17-year-old Shenzhen teenager said. “I will never like or chase another star for the rest of my life.”
Chinese-Canadian singer Kris Wu detained in Beijing on suspicion of rape
She spent countless hours following him on and offline, listening to his albums and spending whatever she could on products and advertisements in support of her idol.
Then Wu’s star came crashing down, and his detention sent shock waves through his community of fans and the entertainment industry alike.
Business insiders said Wu’s case was a turning point in a crackdown launched in June to rein in the star agents, fan clubs and social media platforms that have become hugely influential among young people in recent years.
But analysts said fandom was one of the few avenues of public participation in China and the crackdown might not have the desired effect.
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Pop star Kris Wu detained by police in China over rape allegations
The crackdown on the industry started about two months ago.
Since then, the country’s internet watchdog, the Cyberspace Administration of China, has deleted more than 150,000 “harmful messages”, closed down over 4,000 social media accounts and taken at least 39 mobile apps offline.
Also on Friday, Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social media platform, announced the removal of the “Star Power Ranking List” – one of the most important virtual battlegrounds among Chinese fans to show their love and support for the stars.
It said the list had been removed “to ensure the orderly development of the community and channel the rational chasing of stars by fans”.
The moves over the last two months are part of efforts to clamp down on the country’s increasingly obsessive fan culture.
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It is a world in which Melody Zhou, a 16-year-old high school student in Guangzhou, works with other fans to promote the fortunes of her favourite stars.
Like Nini, Melody spent thousands of hours on internet sites like Weibo defending her idol by posting comments and praise and sometimes attacks on his rivals. Such “exchanges of fires” by the fans have contributed hugely to Weibo’s massive traffic.
Fans like Nini and Melody do not act alone and they often follow what the fan club leaders, commonly known as “fan heads”, ask them to do.
Summer Song, who runs a small “fan-nurturing” business in Beijing, said many of these fan leaders were paid for their efforts.
“We know the fan heads of all the top stars. We work with the brands to create buzz for the stars through events. This is big business and you can make as much as 200,000 yuan (US$30,840) even for a small event,” Song said.
“Sometimes, I would pay the fan head more than 100,000 yuan for helping with an event.”
Kris Wu removed from Chinese social media and nearly 1,000 supporters’ accounts meet the same fate following rape allegations
Fan heads encourage the fans to post comments, increase and support the traffic and activities of the brands on different websites and platforms, and manage and boost the popularity of the stars.
“If the fans of different stars have arguments on the web, that’s fantastic because you don’t have to worry about traffic and the brands will pay even more,” Song said.
“To me, I think that this star worship thing is like a prison as the people inside can’t see what’s happening outside, and what they say in public is different from what they truly believe.
“In the eyes of the fans, their idols are perfect and they won’t even accept any criticism against them.
“But the fan heads use them like free labour and profit from it but the fans think what they do is for their stars increasing their popularity and [commercial] value.”
“Wu’ s fall may signal the end of the golden era of ‘top traffic stars’,” Song said.
Nevertheless, Melody said she believed chasing stars had made her a better person.
“It has a positive effect on me, making me a better person and understanding that [success] comes from hard work and discipline,” Melody said.
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Chen Chun, an independent researcher with a PhD from Guangzhou-based Sun Yat-sen University, said today’s fan culture could be traced to 2004 and the Super Girl singing contest, an unofficial Chinese version of the global television franchise Pop Idol that became a national TV sensation almost overnight.
According to Chen, the phenomenon of star chasing has been shaped by the rise of boy band culture in South Korea and Japan, TV reality shows and China’s internet boom.
It had also been influenced by a crackdown by regulators on the widespread corruption and tax cheats in the industry over the last decade.
Chen said the Wu scandal just gave the authorities an excuse to further crack down on fandom.
“The [current] fan culture is related to the suppression of the cultural space, and censorship of cultural activities that have become prevalent since 2012,” Chen said. “Young people, who are full of passion, have nowhere to turn to develop their interest so they chase stars.”
Lu Pin, a social activist and founder of the NGO Feminist Voice, said the authorities had allowed fan culture to grow in the past decade because it was generally apolitical and could be manipulated for the promotion of patriotism among young people.
“Fandom [as a cultural phenomenon] is harmless and apolitical but the Communist Party still won’t allow pluralism in the society and wants to ensure control over everybody,” Lu said.
Patriotic posts by the Communist Youth League and government mouthpieces such as state-run People’s Daily, for example, can also attract hundreds of millions of comments from fans after being reposted by popular celebrities.
Chen said she doubted whether the regulatory purge would achieve its goal because every society needed entertainment and there was a huge amount of money involved.
“There are tens of millions of fans of these stars and billions of dollars behind [the business],” Chen said. “The fans worship their idols who are controlled by capital, and the authorities worry that it can be dangerous for social stability.”
Lu said young people needed “outlets” to express themselves and China’s tight control of public participation had aggravated the problem.
“Every country needs entertainment – even in authoritarian states. Cracking down on chasing stars will not solve the problem,” she said.
