China’s crackdown on online fan clubs ‘necessary’ to help trapped teenagers, anthropologist says

China’s online fan club culture is the product of “capital and technology” deployed by internet companies, and Beijing’s crackdown is justified as it is difficult for teenagers to break free from the clubs’ grip, according to Xiang Biao, director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany.

Online fan circles, or informal virtual communities centred around an idol, have attracted Beijing’s attention and become the latest target of a government crackdown. People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece, said on Friday that “the deformed fan circle must be regulated”.

China’s internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, is expected to impose restrictions on the activities of online fan clubs that some see as bordering on cults.

“Fan clubs are different from normal, spontaneous star-chasing behaviour,” said Xiang, who studies migration and social change in China and Asia, in an interview with the South China Morning Post on Thursday.

Xiang said that fan clubs usually feed constant information to members, which encourages their indulgence and motivates them to take action.

“Fans also want a sense of identity from other fans, so there is pressure for them to stay in the fan clubs and continue to invest effort and money into them,” said Xiang, who added that this “need” was being exploited by capital and technology.