China has banned its celebrities from showing off their wealth on social media.
Gatekeepers News reports that China has banned its celebrities from showing off their wealth on social media in the latest crackdown on the entertainment industry.
The Cyberspace Administration of China announced yesterday that celebrities in the country will not be allowed to “show off wealth” or “extravagant pleasure” on social media.
The rules also prevent celebrities from publishing false or private information, provoking fans against other fan groups, and spreading rumours.
Additionally, Business Insider reports that social media accounts of both celebrities and fans will be required to adhere to “public order and good customs, adhere to correct public opinion orientation and value orientation, promote socialist core values, and maintain a healthy style and taste”.
In September, China’s celebrities were warned they must “oppose the decadent ideas of money worship, hedonism and extreme individualism” at an entertainment industry symposium hosted by the Communist Party.
The meeting in Beijing ran with the slogan: ‘Love the party, love the country, advocate morality and art.’
It was attended by senior party officials and showbusiness bosses who were told they must conform to social ethics, personal morality and family values.
China sees celebrity culture and the pursuit of wealth as a dangerous Western import which threatens Communism because it promotes individualism rather than collectivism.
Attendees of the conference were told they must “consciously abandon vulgar and kitsch inferior tastes, and consciously oppose the decadent ideas of money worship, hedonism, and extreme individualism,” according to state media.
In August, a list of “misbehaving celebrities”, who have allegedly been blacklisted by Beijing, was circulated on social media.
Zhao, 45, and Zheng, 30, were both on the list, along with Chinese-Canadian pop star Kris Wu, who was arrested on suspicion of rape earlier this year.
Last month, a leaked memo revealed that Beijing planned on banning video games that feature gay relationships, “effeminate males” or allow players the choice of being good or evil.
Officials said the country no longer sees games as “entertainment”, but instead as a form of art that must promote what it considers “correct values” and an “accurate understanding” of history and culture.
As such, the ban will also prohibit video games that involve the conquest of “barbarians” or attempt to alter the history of the Nazis or imperial Japan, according to the memo seen by the South China Morning Post.
In August, China limited children to three hours a week of online gaming in what it said was an attempt to curb addiction, with the latest ban representing another step in the CCP’s cultural crackdown, led by president Xi Xinping.
The new memo gave a series of guidelines to game developers in China, or those developing for the Chinese market.
Under the new rules, characters must have a “clear gender”, and plots cannot have “blurred moral boundaries”.
It added: “If regulators can’t tell the character’s gender immediately, the setting of the characters could be considered problematic and red flags raised.”
