China Briefing | Meet Cui Yongyuan, chat show host: China’s unlikeliest whistle-blower (just ask Fan Bingbing)

One of China’s most renowned TV chat show hosts from the 1990s has shown he’s not afraid to take on the big guns, whether it’s tax-evading celebrities or judges at China’s highest court

Reading Time:5 minutes

Cui Yongyuan is a former television host and producer.

Published: 9:20am, 26 Jan 2019Updated: 9:19am, 26 Jan 2019

Despite his background in journalism, Cui Yongyuan is on any measure the most unlikely celebrated whistle-blower to take on the rich and famous and powerful in China.

After all, he used to be one of them. He was one of China’s most renowned television chat show hosts back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, during which time he interviewed senior Chinese officials, once hosted and twice appeared in comedy skits in the annual Lunar New Year galas broadcast on national television and watched by hundreds of millions of people.

But in recent years, he has become better known for transforming himself into a unique kind of whistle-blower by using his influence and his wildly popular social media platforms.

Early last year, his public allegations about tax evasion by Fan Bingbing, one of China’s highest-paid actresses, triggered a nationwide tax audit of all of the country’s leading entertainment personalities, who were later forced to cough up tens of billions of yuan in overdue taxes and fines.

Towards the end of last year, Cui started to take on the Supreme People’s Court and its president Zhou Qiang by championing the cause of an ordinary businessman who was embroiled in a 12-year legal case against powerful local officials over a coal mine with a potential value of over 100 billion yuan (US$14.7 billion).