Pubdate: Sat, 26 Dec 2015
Source: Waikato Times (New Zealand)
Copyright: 2015 Independent Newspapers Limited
Contact:  http://www.waikatotimes.co.nz/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/486

China

BID TO TURN CELEBRITIES INTO MORAL MODELS

Imagine if, after arresting a wave of celebrities on drug charges, 
American government officials pressed the heads of major Hollywood 
studios, A-list actors, record-label chiefs and chart-topping singers 
to sign promises that they would stay away from vices like drugs, 
pornography and gambling.

Simultaneously, substance-abusing performers found their films shut 
out of cinemas, forcing producers into hasty re-shoots and re-edits. 
And news media began running editorials criticising top directors for 
failing to inform on associates they had seen smoking pot or taking ecstasy.

This is no fanciful figment: with China developing a hearty appetite 
for marijuana, methamphetamine and other illicit substances, Chinese 
authorities are training their crosshairs squarely on stars  even as 
they look to celebrities as front-line soldiers in the nation's 
nascent war on drugs. As of June, China had listed more than 3 
million people on a roll of drug users, up from 1.8 million in 2011, 
according to Liang Ran, a drug-control official in the Ministry of Justice.

Millions more fly below the radar of police, and China's National 
Narcotics Control Commission estimates the number of drug users to be 
more than 14 million, roughly 1 per cent of the population. In 2014, 
authorities seized 69 tons of illicit drugs, arrested nearly 890,000 
people on possession-type charges and almost 170,000 more on charges 
related to production and trafficking. Among the celebrities who have 
been arrested on drug charges in the past 18 months are Jackie Chan's 
son, Jaycee, and his fellow actor friend Kai Ko; the pop singer Yin 
Xiangjie; and actor Wang Xuebing, who had a major role in Black Coal, 
Thin Ice, which took top honors at the 2014 Berlin Film Festival.

Yin and Chan spent months in jail; Ko delivered a tearful public 
apology but nevertheless found himself cut out of films including 
Monster Hunt, a partially animated family film that after hurried 
re-shoots became the topgrossing Chinese movie of all time. Wang's 
drama, A Fool, abruptly had its May release date scrapped and arrived 
in theaters only in November with some of the supporting actor's 
scenes trimmed.

But in a one-party system where even today's Communist Party leaders 
maintain that art should "serve the state," authorities are not 
merely setting out to punish stars who break the law. They also seek, 
in a time of rapidly loosening social mores, to turn entertainers 
into moral models - and even model informants.

The campaign has caught even the most respected celebrities 
flatfooted. Last month, after Yin was arrested, the state-run New 
China News Agency interviewed director Zhang Yimou and about a dozen 
major stars about their attitudes on celebrity drug use. "I have seen 
many actors using marijuana together during their breaks . . . . It's 
terrible that artists are involved in pornography, gambling and 
drugs," said Zhang, who has directed such films as Hero and Raise the 
Red Lantern, and is in production on the big-budget The Great Wall, 
starring Matt Damon.

"This trend is unhealthy for the industry. Many people tried to 
persuade me to try ecstasy, and even told me, 'This is the origin of 
inspiration'," Zhang said.

But rather than winning praise for his propriety, Zhang was pummeled 
in the state-run press for failing to report the lawbreakers to police.

"Instead of protecting his actors, he was appeasing and shielding 
them. This will only make these movies stars more addicted to drugs," 
said Eastday, a Shanghai-based news outlet. "If Zhang considered it 
disloyal to report his friends to the police, he has made a serious 
mistake, sacrificing the greater good for the sake of his self-interest."

The Southern Metropolis Daily wrote a similar commentary headlined 
"Real love is informing on friends to police," while the Global 
Times, a nationalist tabloid closely affiliated with the Communist 
Party, ran a cartoon of a sadlooking star shooting up with a 
hypodermic needle as Zhang watched from around a corner.

"The government wants celebrities to actively shoulder more 
responsibility" for spreading anti-drug messages, said Pi Yijun, an 
adviser to the Beijing Narcotics Control Commission. "Although 
celebrities are a small per centage of China's overall drug users, 
they are an indicator of the trend. If more celebrities are taking 
drugs then so are more ordinary people." China, Pi said, is still 
much less permissive about drug use than America. And censors ensure 
that drug use very rarely figures in popular Chinese entertainment. A 
Chinese TV programme along the lines of Breaking Bad would almost 
certainly never be approved by authorities  though the American show 
about a methcooking high school science teacher is available online 
in China and is popular.

By pressuring people like Zhang shoes to be informants, some 
observers say, Chinese authorities are walking a thin line that can 
erode social trust and sow a culture of fear, discontent, secrecy and 
creative conservatism. That could undermine China's efforts to 
develop a worldclass entertainment industry, which officials see as a 
key to advancing its cultural and economic influence.

"This is the perfect 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' 
situation. If [Zhang] told, he might be called a rat; if not, then 
he'd be accused of dereliction of duty," said Ying Zhu, a scholar of 
the Chinese entertainment industry at the City University of New York.

"The nanny state and the media/internet vigilantes need to be mindful 
of the consequences of ratting out friends, colleagues, and 
neighbours and families . . . There is a chilling price to be paid 
for turning people against each other while looking over one's own shoulders."

"Ethically," Pi said, " Zhang should report drug users, but in 
Chinese culture, it's hard to put righteousness above friends and 
family." Authorities, he added, might have more success in making it 
commercially risky for stars to use (or silently condone) drugs.

That's why Chinese officials are pressing measures to discourage bad 
behaviour. This fall, the China Alliance of Radio, Film and 
Television a state-sanctioned umbrella group of official industry 
organisation - formed an ethics committee that it said could order 
individuals or organisations who violate its norms to issue public 
apologies. It could also disqualify them from awards, or blacklist 
them from the industry.

Last month, the group held a forum in Beijing, touting the fact that 
50 of its member organisations had signed on to its "pledge on 
professional ethics and selfdiscipline." (In addition to shunning 
drugs, the pledge also obligates signatories to "protect the 
leadership of the Communist Party." Actress Fan Bingbing, who has 
crossed over into Hollywood productions including X-Men: Days of 
Future Past and Iron Man 3 said at the forum, "A good actor must be a 
good person first."

LA Times
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom