Chinese boy band TV show ‘Youth With You’, with Blackpink’s Lisa as judge, goes off the air after competitor’s parents alleged to have links to illegal activities

A mainland boy band competition show has been taken off the air after the parents of one of its contestants were alleged to have links to illegal businesses.

The Beijing Municipal Radio and Television Bureau on Tuesday suspended Youth With You Season 3, produced by Chinese streaming website iQiyi, after meeting with iQiyi’s producers to require compliance with broadcasting regulations. The suspension came after the show’s leading contestant, Tony Yu Jingtian, was embroiled in scandals about his parents’ former karaoke business and viewers questioned his nationality.

Broadcast since February, the show had four judges who used public votes to select nine winners from 119 contestants to form a boy band. The judges included Lisa from hit K-pop girl band Blackpink.

Yu is one of the 20 contestants to compete in the finals originally scheduled for broadcast on May 8. The Chengdu native emigrated to Canada with his family in 2008.

Online posts implicating Yu’s parents in allegedly illegal businesses before their emigration to Canada started to appear at the end of April on Douban, one of the most popular social media platforms in China. The posts alleged the karaoke business run by Yu’s parents was involved in drug trafficking and prostitution. In response to the posts, Yu’s mother, Li Qin, wrote on the massive microblogging site Weibo that she was sad her past imprudent business dealings had adversely affected her son.

“The karaoke business was jointly operated by me, my husband and a business partner,” Li wrote. “Before our family emigrated to Canada in 2008, we transferred the full ownership of the business to the business partner. From then on, we have not been involved in its operation at all.”

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Li claimed their sloppy administration work regarding the business’s ownership transfer had led to the current scandal.

“In 2008, we just signed a business transfer agreement hastily”, she wrote, adding she and her husband failed to provide the relevant commerce and industry authorities with the correct applications. “We never thought that such business negligence many years ago would create so much harm for people who like our son. I and my husband are very sorry for this.”

Li added they had employed a lawyer to deal with the vast amount of false information about them now circulating online.

Tony Yu’s nationality has also come into question. He competed in South Korea’s boy band competition show Produce 101 in 2019 and said on stage his nationality was Canadian. Yet on Youth with You, he said he was proud to represent China in the international pop band elimination show. Netizens highlighted the “discrepancy” in his nationality declarations, accusing him of being opportunistic and having dual nationality, which is not recognised in China.

To add salt to the Yu family’s wounds, in early May, viewers who had bought a particular kind of yogurt made by the show’s sponsor began to post videos of many boxes of the yogurt being thrown away. The viewers had bought the yogurt so they could vote for contestants on Youth with You, and their dumping videos soon went viral.

Made by the Inner Mongolian milk brand Mengniu Dairy, which is owned by the state-owned China National Cereals, Oils and Foodstuffs, the yogurt is sold in bottles. A QR code for voting for the boy band contestants was printed in the bottle caps.

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Videos showing people throwing unwanted bottles of yogurt into a ditch next to heaps of yogurt boxes were posted online soon after the Yu family’s scandal emerged. Sales of yogurt bottle caps began to appear on online marketplaces, with 10 caps selling for 45 yuan (US$7). On May 4, the Communist Party mouthpiece Xinhua ran a commentary vehemently attacking both the “wasteful” practice seen on the videos and the show’s producers for their failures to foresee the problems that have arisen.

“When planning such a voting method, have they ever considered the risk of huge waste?”, the commentary asked. “Have they ever thought of shouldering any social responsibility for this? Have they ever thought of what a bad example and adverse influence such a show and such a marketing method will have on young people? This is disrespectful to labour and a legal travesty. The final outcome of this is not only milk spilled onto ditches, but young people’s values cast into the dustbin.”

The iQiyi platform apologised for the show’s problems on May 5. “We actively shoulder social responsibility and will further improve the management system of our shows … to create a healthy online environment,” the statement read.

In response to the show’s suspension, online users said reality TV competitions should strengthen their screening mechanisms to prevent contestants with dubious backgrounds from competing.

Mainland showbiz was sick, viewer Pan Xiaofeng wrote on Weibo. “The materialistic fan-based economy distorts social values. The government should shake up the industry.”