The field of Chinese celebrity studies, notably fandoms and the burgeoning wanghong sector, has experienced rapid growth. Shenshen Cai's book, part of the Asian Celebrity and Fandom Studies series edited by Jian Xu and Sean Redmond, with further China-related titles to follow, is an indication of the maturation of serious scholarly interest in the Chinese celebrity scene. And for good reason. Like everything conducted at scale in the public sphere in China, the entertainment industry, celebrity culture and the conduct of individual celebrities are inherently political. As China attempts to recalibrate its economic model and increase consumption, the celebrity industry is equally relevant economically, through its connections to commercial activity, advertising, rural development, e-commerce and so on. As China continues to pursue socialist modernization and a Chinese Dream characterized by middle-class mores, celebrities have a social role – frequently invoked on state media op-ed pages as a moral responsibility – to display behaviour and attitudes consistent with desirable attributes like filiality, frugality, faithfulness, patriotism, loyalty to the Party and other “core socialist values.”
As the domestic celebrity industry has grown and taken on new forms with the popularization of digital and social media, scholars have identified its “Chinese characteristics” and demonstrated its utility as a vehicle for understanding political and social processes. It is no longer viable to imply that celebrity is frivolous or unworthy of serious academic investigation. Cai's book deals with celebrities rather than the celebrity industry or celebrity culture writ large; it tells individual stories situated in the political, legal, regulatory, discursive and normative frameworks that govern them. The book looks at celebrities from a number of different directions: the celebrity scandal; celebrities as public intellectuals; sports stars as national symbols; celebrities as proponents of women's rights; and internet celebrities as public activists. This selection does some justice to the sheer variety of celebrities and the issues that pertain to them. But like many studies that have preceded it, analytical clarity is lost in treating all forms of celebrity alike. Not all celebrities are born equal: in terms of the various forms of capital that attach to celebrities (political, economic, cultural, affective), there is such substantial variation between film and pop stars, athletes, public intellectuals, CEOs and influencers, that the case for “celebrity” as a singular all-encompassing category is hard to make. As the field of Chinese celebrity studies matures, it is not just the matter of categorizing celebrities that requires greater conceptual clarity.
This book is not preoccupied with conceptualizing or theorizing Chinese celebrity, but rather in accounting for and demonstrating the social and political relevance of various classes of Chinese celebrities across several domains. To achieve that, Cai presents an engaging evidence base in a free-flowing and empirically driven narrative (a certain kind of celebrity fan will appreciate that it is full of juicy detail). There are many observations that complicate our understanding of the contemporary celebrity scene; for instance, on the connection between high level male Party officials and female celebrities (captured by the dark joke that CCTV was at one time an “Imperial harem” [p. 9] for the upper echelons of the Party/state), the role of women celebrities as “whistle-blowers” in the anti-corruption campaign, and the public treatment of perceived women “gold-diggers.” There is perceptive discussion of the marginalized and untrustworthy role that entertainers traditionally inhabited in China and how that was transformed after 1949 as the new regime sought to leverage their political potential. The ambivalence that Chinese celebrities are subject to by Chinese publics (described as “an ambiguous and paradoxical response” embodying a “love–hate sentiment” pp. 5–6) apparently runs deeper than the fact that many have joined a class of politically connected nouveaux riche. The list of expectations on celebrities – from the government, entertainment industry actors and fans alike – is formidably long. No wonder Chinese celebrities are among the best behaved in the world. Granted, the chapter on celebrity transgressions shows how some Chinese celebrities have succumbed to disorderly tax affairs (actresses and singers Mao Amin, Liu Xiaoqing, and Fan Bingbing), extramarital affairs (actors Wen Zhang and Wu Xiabo), violations of the one-child policy (director Zhang Yimou), insider trading (actress Zhao Wei), serious sexual violence (Canadian-Chinese singer/rapper Kris Wu), soliciting commercial sex (film director Wang Quan'an, actor Huang Haibo and pianist Li Yundi) and more. Athletes found guilty of doping by international agencies, celebrities dabbling in recreational drugs and those deemed insufficiently patriotic or disseminating insufficient “positive energy” represent another set of transgressions not covered.
I am sympathetic to Cai's argument that the emasculation of commercial media and civil society and the progressive tightening of internet censorship under Xi Jinping have increased the potential importance of celebrities as voices for worthy causes or marginalized people. But Cai is overly sanguine about celebrities’ capacity for promoting “the media freedom, civil and human rights of China's citizens” (p. 15). And there is scant evidence that celebrities are willing or able to question “the political system and legitimacy of the rule of the CCP” (p. 15). Celebrities represent a challenge for the Party in terms of how to manage (and leverage) individuals with enormous reach and devoted fandoms, but the density of the formal and informal control matrix, the economic incentive structure and the threat of genuine “cancel culture” are impregnable barriers to what Cai envisages. Some of the examples cited, in my view, overinterpret this potential (e.g. Jia Zhangke), are outdated (e.g. blog-era Han Han, sex positive blogger Mu Zimei), idiosyncratic (e.g. exiled former “golden generation” football player Hao Haidong), or met with ambiguous endings (e.g. Chai Jing, Fang Fang). Nonetheless, Cai Shenshen has made a sustained contribution to the study of celebrity in China and Contemporary Chinese Celebrities is further evidence of why we should be mindful of it.
