(camera shutter clicking)
(photographers yelling)
- [Wenxin Fan] Zhao Wei is one of China's
A-list movie actresses.
At some point, she got married to a developer,
a businessman,
and the couple started to make rounds
in the investment world.
That's why the media dubbed her
as China's female Warren Buffett,
but recently people found
that Zhao Wei was being erased on the Chinese internet.
China's cracking down on the cultural world
because the party is very much concerned
about some of the influences over its younger generation.
(enigmatic percussion music)
(speaking in foreign language)
She directed a movie called "So Young" in 2013,
but now the movie's entry on the Chinese website,
if we went to Wikipedia,
the name of the director
has been replaced by punctuation marks.
It now reads dash.
And on the Chinese video streaming sites,
some of her best movies and TV series
was removed from the sites.
And on Weibo, the microblog site,
her fan page was gone along with millions of discussions
about her past performance and news.
China has always seen culture
as part of the force to enforce the right kind of thinking.
The party sees that the culture scene recently
has become messy,
especially the so-called fan culture,
(crowd cheering)
how celebrities were worshiped, especially online,
and the party sees a few examples of bad characters
who are sending the wrong message.
It is going after these actors who made a lot of money,
but had tax evasion problems.
One of the celebrities was removed online
because he was found once visiting a Japanese shrine,
that has always been a controversial place in China.
(enigmatic percussion music)
So at the same time,
we're seeing the parties cracking down
on the private tutoring industry because it sees children,
especially those below K-12
being influenced too much outside public schools.
They are also regulating
how the kids are spending time online playing video games.
Zhao Wei's treatment sent a message to others,
especially to other celebrities,
because even someone like her,
someone with her influence
can't avoid being erased online.
(speaking in foreign language)
And maybe even more scarier is that, you know,
no reason was given.
The government sounds vague in what they see
as the correct or the wanted culture.
So whether you have a huge influence doesn't matter,
they are at the mercy of the government's policy.
(enigmatic percussion music)