Jaycee Chan: as NWA might say, a snitch is a snitch/ if you’re poor or rich

In the hopes of avoiding getting bored to death in a Chinese prison cell, film “star” Chan has allegedly spilled on his friends like an action hero, according to Liberty Times, a Taiwanese newspaper.

The “laundry list” contains up to 120 names including a singer with a Taiwanese band “whose surname starts with F, has invested in two night clubs in Taiwan and his family has strong connections with the military.”

Who could it possibly be? Netizens point to Johnny Fei, whose father is a general – but the latter has already told the media, they got the wrong Johnny.

It’s long been known that you need to be on drugs to properly enjoy Mando-pop; it’s vaguely reassuring to learn, then, that its producers are suffering with us. Look forward, then, to a long series of arrests of artists whose work is but a footnote on the arse grapes of musical history.

Meanwhile, a letter that pusillanimous performing-arts associations have been made to sign, pledging not to hire any musicians guilty of drug crimes, has supposedly been leaked [NOTE: the authenticity of this letter has not been verified]

The letter, leaked on Weibo

 Dear Singers and Actors,

 How are you?

 I’m writing this letter with grave worries and anxiety. As you must have heard, many showbiz professionals have been busted for whoring and doping recently, and the suddenly toughened-up mainland media environment for entertainers is making us very concerned.

 As a major entertainment group, we feel we are duty bound to notice our entertainers of the importance to abide by law and morality. Please, actors, do not give yourself excuses like “releasing the pressure and relieving oneself” to bring unforeseeable disasters to yourself and the company.

 But since we hold the attitude to “always stick with our people,” we have some sweet advice, as below, for you. Please make sure you follow these: 

1)    Reject invitations to any party involving drugs and report to the company truthfully with absolutely truth [sic]. Keep yourself completely uninvolved with drugs and we won’t allow serious doping problems like Chan and Ke to occur

2)   Those with more colorful private life, we advise you to use Liebao Cleaning Master [a smartphone app to delete junk files and boost running speed] to have your personal information cleansed thoroughly, protected and avoid being leaked.

3)   Reject your friends or other people in the business’s invitations and seduction to go to places linked to prostitution and report to the company about such things. Saving racy pictures is prohibited and we don’t allow incidents like Edison Chan to happen

4)   Be careful of your image and stay low-key at bars, clubs etc, and avoid things that damage your image, like drinking, smoking and swearing in public

Please do follow the four pieces of advice above. I’m bloody begging you now. 

Yes, it’s tough being successful in China these days. Officials get vanished, Big Vs are squashed, businessmen fear looting and movie stars get treated like 13 year olds. It looks like the PRC may never get that Cypress Hill tour.

H/T Valentina Luo

A comprehensive report on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s website by correspondent Stephen McDonell explains how he’d headed down to dirty dawg bar Dos Kolegas for some beery r ’n’ r following a stint in sunny Ukraine. It was at this point that Knacker turned up with some “small containers” – which didn’t contain Welcome Back gifts.

This phone camera image, via ABC, shows the scene at Dos Kolegas two weekends ago

“With toilet doors open, police watched as we gave samples one by one. Women too had to squat with the toilet door open. A police woman would stand in the doorway and partially block the view of those who walked about in front of the stalls”

It got even worse for those who flunked out:

“[They] were taken outside the bar and made to sit on the ground with their hands tied behind their backs – heads down. Some had their mouths taped closed”

For the sorry bastards who failed what McDonell identified as a marijuana test – who included at least one dazed FOB tourist – two weeks of detention await, followed by deportation: “No lawyers. No right of appeal. No telephone calls allowed.” (Loyal rag the Beijinger earlier cheerleaded the arrest of drug dealers as “welcome news to the vast majority of foreign residents of the city who choose to live within the letter of the law.” So, look forward to their strongly worded editorial regarding probable cause and due process soon)

Naturally, the expat rumor mill is now in overdrive and the theories flying: did Dos Kolegas not pay their maintenance fee? Is this part of the wider crackdown that has seen various hapless stars – including the son of CCP enthusiast Jackie Chan – busted for personal use, while their hapless management sign letters effectively banning any naughty artists from recording with them (quick pause while one pictures the history of Western pop sans narcotics: it’s 40 blissful years of One Direction).

The establishment targeted – and some were quick to link the raid to a spot check on Dada and others in February, under the aegis of a routine examination of “fire extinguishers” – attracts an overseas clientele.  The aforementioned sweep on dealers, meanwhile, occurred in an area, the Gongti West strip, best known for nightlife purgatories like Baby Face and True Color (can’t specifically name any others, as I’m not a patron) and commonly frequented by thundercunts of the Li Tianyi persuasion.

As there is currently a national drug crackdown you may have overlooked among all the other crackdowns, it seems more likely this is a raid based on specific information, such as a suspect grassing up his/her mates for a lighter sentence. Wrong time, wrong place. Can happen to anyone, like the long-term foreign business owner who happened to be sharing a sofa with a woman when her apartment got raided some months ago. He was gone within days.

A wider issue is the use of on-the-spot urinalysis, which the American Civil Liberties Union (I know – don’t laugh) has called “intrusive… degrading… an invasion of privacy… [it] reveals not only the presence of illegal drugs, but also the existence of many other physical and medical conditions,” adding the tests are subject to “human error [and] false positive results.” And that’s tests conducted under laboratory conditions – which I submit that the public bathrooms of Dos Kolegas do not at all resemble.

Urine samples commonly test for “for 31 different metabolites caused by marijuana, 4 caused by cocaine, 3 caused by opiates, 1 caused by Phencyclidine, and 5 caused by amphetamines.” God help you if you just returned from a fact-finding trip to Colorado. False positives can include Ibuprofen for marijuana, decongestants and diet pills (amphetamine), certain antibiotics (heroin and cocaine) and poppy seeds (opium and heroin). Everyone thing you wanted to know about urine tests but were too baked busy to research can be found here.

Police allegedly explained these methods thus: “[we] could not appear to be showing favoritism towards [foreigners] because it could be misconstrued as corruption.” So, foreigners may expect the same application of the law and their rights as Chinese – i.e. at the unaccountable whim of the state.

More worrying, at least from one point of view, was the tentative suggestion that the Thought Police may be turning their attention to what we say – or more specifically, write – as per this tweet by Kunming resident, and co-founder of the East By South East blog, Brian Eyler:

A tweet suggesting visa applicants may be required to sign pledges

At publication time, we’d yet to hear back from Eyler regarding the provisions against “online criticism” or  criticism of the government (in lieu of an update, Eyler says in this thread that the interviews occurred in 2014 in Kunming, and were more of a “lecture”).

[UPDATE:] Eyler says the interview lasted three minutes: “Basically a high-ranking PSB officer sat across the room from me puffing on a cigarette and rattled off a bunch of ‘don’t dos,’ including the ones I posted on Sunday. He mentioned no attending protests and no doing drugs… He didn’t mention blogging, Twitter, WeChat or anything specific – just something about 网上写负面的东西 [“writing negative things online”].

“The interview only applies for foreigners applying for their long terms visa for the first time in a new locality… Could have been directed at me, can’t rule that out, but I have nothing to suspect that the blog has fallen onto the local government radar even through our blogging about the PX protests last year.”  Beijing Cream also  contacted other respondents for details of their experiences. Nothing they reported rang any alarm bells. [ENDS UPDATE]

In Tianjin, where police chief Wu Changshun was incidentally detained on corruption charges earlier this month, expat Matthew Stinson said he’s merely been occasionally required to attend the Exit-Entry Bureau in person, where they “sometimes remind us not to promote a religion.” Eric Fish, an American writer who hosts the China Hang-Up podcast and has lived in Nanjing and Beijing, said his experience amounted to little more than a standard lecture to fellow teachers. “Most of it was just safety stuff and reminding us to register,” Fish replied, stating that this was back in 2008.

“The most political thing he said was to not conduct religious activities… When I got a student visa in Beijing at Tsinghua, a cop came and gave basically the same lecture to an auditorium full of new students,” Fish added. Students at his Tsinghua journalism program “had to sign a pledge not to do any reporting while they were in China before they were issued their [student] visa.” (My own experience, in 2009, amounted to turning up at the Bureau in person because “they want to have a look at you,” as per the advice of my friendly HR representative. “He likes you,” she whispered later. I felt like a prom queen.)

Amid the obfuscation and anger is an unfriendly reminder that we’re all living in a police state – albeit one where the cops would probably much sooner do nothing than spend their days being proactive.

Trying to read the tea leaves too much, particularly when linking the arbitrary policing of foreigners to wider issues of central administration, is usually an exercise in futility. Best to view local policy in China as like a Tom Friedman metaphor: it may not make much sense to begin with, and even less so later, but it’s the one with the Pulitzer and column in the Times, so we have to suck it up.

Follow RFH on Twitter @MRFH

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post incorrectly spelled the surname of Stephen McDonell as McDowell. 

The finger is now being pointed at Rui Chenggang

The arrest of another journalist in China is normally cause for concern: as the news is shared across social networks, tweets of sympathy accumulate, human rights groups and lawyers protest, and diplomats may even issue statements of public concern.

But the detention of economics anchor Rui Chenggang (pictured), reportedly “dragged” from his offices by investigators just hours before his show was due to go live, has prompted almost the opposite – the overwhelming response, as the NY Times’s Ed Wong noted, has been one of schadenfreude (xingzai lehuo, “feel happy about someone’s disaster”). In a rare show of alliance, Western journalists and Chinese state media have instead issued a steady drip of allegations and gloating commentaries about Rui’s supposed misdeeds.

“It’s just breathtaking how many people feel disgusted or offended when he’s mentioned,” tweeted anti-censorship commentator Michael Anti while neatly skewering China’s own public-relations problem: “Such a classic example of negative PR, and yet Rui’s hailed as some icon of the nation’s soft power. There you have it, China’s rise.”

If a man is judged by the company he keeps, Rui was always keen to share his circle with the world. On his blogs, acquaintanceships with the likes of Bill Gates and Kevin Rudd were dropped with the frequency of one who has something to prove; his conversation is said to be similarly peppered with, “As Bill [Clinton] once told me…” or “As I said to Henry [Kissinger]…”

“[He’s] the biggest name-dropper I know,” said a former colleague at state mouthpiece CCTV, where he was a frequent presenter of Economics News Broadcast. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the colleague described her former peer in none-too-impressed terms: “Arrogant. Snobby. Climber.” And then there are his close relationships with many who have already fallen victim to the purge that is scything through Chinese society under the banner of a corruption crackdown (Rui is said to have boasted, for example, about his friendship with Bo Guagua, at least before the senior Bo was charged with corruption).

Still, none of this behavior qualifies as criminal – merely distasteful. Under the microscope, though, are apparent financial transgressions formerly considered de rigeur in Chinese media circles.

According to financial records reviewed last week by Tencent Finance, Rui helped set up a PR company called Pegasus and owned 30% of the firm. Pegasus later made the “Top 1o Chinese PR Firms” list compiled by the China International Public Relations Association and, since 2009, numbered among its clients — perhaps unsurprisingly —  Rui’s employer, CCTV Finance Channel for its Davos coverage (cutting Rui loose on LinkedIn, the WEF’s managing director had this to say on the matter).

Alan VanderMolen: issued denial

Edelman’s owners, via DJE vice-chairman Alan VanderMolen (who inked the purchase of Pegasus while running the firm’s Asia-Pacific operations), later confirmed to PR industry publication the Holmes Report that “Pegasus was engaged by corporate sponsors involved in underwriting CCTV’s presence” at Davos in 2009 and 2010. VanderMolen declined to identify the sponsors and added that there was no commercial relationship between CCTV and Pegasus “to my knowledge.”

Also taken away that fateful day was Li Yong, the Deputy Director of the Finance Channel, where Rui had worked since 2003, bringing the total of those at CCTV under investigation to nine – including its director Guo Zhenxi, producer Tian Liwu, and now its youngest presenter, the once-fragrant female anchor Ouyang Zhiwei.

Rui may have named his company Pegasus, the mythological wingéd horse, but a more apt classical analogy might be Icarus, the youthful highflier doomed by arrogance.

The well-connected 37-year-old presenter, who has been a regular at Davos World Economic Forum since he was 22, did not appear to envisage his own downfall, which was so sudden that his chair and microphone were still in place, awaiting him. In the event, the show aired at 20:30 on July 11, with his co-host taking on sole presenting duties.

Equally ignorant, apparently, were his colleagues: “We kept phoning him before the programme aired, but the calls never went through,” a CCTV staffer told Thepaper. “That’s why we didn’t even take down his mic.”

But his boss, Guo, had been detained on June 1 – a sure sign, at least, that trouble was imminent. Ever the showman, Rui batted off the rumors, issuing a denial through his assistant while taking to Weibo to quote a conversation between two ancient Zen masters (thus, of course, alluding to his own wisdom): “Hanshan asks Shide, ‘People libel me, bully me, insult me, trick me and neglect me. What should I do?’ Shide laughs: ‘Bear with them, avoid them, tolerate them, respect them and ignore them. Give it a few years, and let’s see.’”

In fact, Rui was only given a few weeks. Meanwhile, he was, at least, wise enough to hedge: his wife and child left for the US in June, according to elite gossip, and are not expected to return.

Fellow anchor Ouyang Zhiwei, led away by prosecutors in June, also appears to be in the soup

 ~

It should not be surprising that his career has almost certainly peaked at the comparatively early age of 36. Rui Chenggang was always an early developer. Born in 1977, he began learning English when he was 10, and according to his own claims, was reading English-language books, including Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by the time he reached middle school.

The top gaokao (university entrance exam) scorer in Hefei, his hometown, Rui entered the Foreign Affairs University in Beijing in 1995, where he had a chance to see the world through an international debate contest. He was, he says, shocked to find how Western youth were educated to express their opinions freely, and told Southern People Weekly he felt like an idiot

In 1999, Rui graduated and, turning down offers from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Bank of China, chose to work at an emerging arm of the state-owned CCTV: the English Channel.

A former colleague there, according to the same article, recalls a man “extremely good at the language [English] and quite smart. He… often said things like he ‘wanted to become the bridge of communication between the East and the West.’” Rui was also an avid self-promoter, says the colleague. When interviewing, he’d hand out copies of his book, urge them to watch his programmes and collect photographs of himself with foreign luminaries.

Four years after Rui began at CCTV English, he was talent-spotted by Finance Channel producer Wang Lifen to host Global News Bulletin, a new current-affairs show. He quickly made a name for himself, scrutinizing the scripts and frequently digressing from them, a practice all but unheard-of among Chinese anchors. A pattern in his work behavior began to emerge: superiors such as producer Qian Xi, who has worked with Rui since 2003, called him “the symbol of the Finance Channel’s internationalization,” even while colleagues and underlings recalled an aloof, distant figure.

“He gets close to the leaders, but stays very distant from common coworkers, barely even saying ‘hello’ to them,” said one peer, who asked not to be named because he still works for the channel.

With a 200- to 300-million-strong audience, Rui’s domestic admiration mostly stemmed from public associating himself with world elites at Davos in 2008;  he enjoyed almost rock-star status among younger viewers. But Rui’s link to Davos wasn’t limited to a role in front of the cameras. By then, Pegasus – the firm he still held a 36% share of – had become the executive service provider for CCTV, reportedly finding a studio for the station a mere 200 metres from the main venue in Switzerland. Tony Blair (pictured) apparently called it “the most cozy and comfortable studio in all of Davos,” according to Tencent. Rui reportedly only sold his Pegasus shares in 2010.

British ex-PM Tony Blair with former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks, recently acquitted of phone hacking

Sources in CCTV also told thepaper.cn that Rui’s family set up their own PR firm, with the sole purpose of commercializing Rui’s interview subjects, their schedules and campaign content. Certainly, he is believed to enjoy a close personal friendship with politician Ling Jinhua’s family that has been subject to longstanding rumors.

Such conflicts of interest appear at odds with his role as a journalist, at least in foreign eyes – but then Chinese media is saturated with such misbehavior. Is it against the law? Even the Global Times wondered. “Did [Rui] know that such behavior was illegal?” asked an unsigned editorial on Tuesday. “Perhaps he believed he was in a gray area where some seek personal gains by exploiting their positions. But the anti-corruption campaign not only targets ‘black holes,’ but also gray areas.”

~

Advertising and public relations (gonggong guanxi) is one of the murkiest industries in China (and also, to be fair, elsewhere). The word guanxi implies connections, the ability to enjoy a string-pulling reach that bests rivals: How many journalists and celebrities can you guarantee at a product launch? Which newspapers can be bought off to stay quiet about a scandal?

Ding Shumiao, for instance, the Shanxi businesswoman accused of colluding with the disgraced railways chief Liu Zhijun over projects worth 180 billion yuan (HK$226 billion), reportedly collected nearly 4 billion yuan securing contracts for the high-speed network with Liu’s help. Her company, founded in 2008, became practically the exclusive advertisement agency for high-speed rail, reaped 120 million RMB in 2010 alone from state-owned companies attending the seventh World Congress on High Speed Rail in Beijing, all thanks to Liu.

One of the Finance Channel’s trademark shows, the annual Consumer Rights Gala on March 15, had become another income source for Guo and his gang. Notorious for its toothless exposes of “scandals” usually perpetuated by foreign firms – while ignoring the egregious antics of domestic giants – the show has been widely mocked in recent years for its clumsy nationalism and reporting techniques.

According to Caixin, local governments and companies routinely inquire before annual tapings to see if their products were on the CCTV “blacklist,” and then offer to pay a gagging fee. Other programmes, such as the praise-singing Economic Figures of the Year, are essentially paid services available to the highest bidder. One website operator told Caixin that Guo had often used his influence to ask portals to delete critical posts about companies that had approached him, or other presenters familiar with him, for help (a practice known in China as “black” PR).

The downfall of Rui and his mentor, Guo, can be seen as part of the aftermath of Li Dongsheng’s arrest and, behind that, ex-Politburo security czar Zhou Yongkang’s own (still unofficial) downfall. Li had worked at CCTV for 21 years, since 1978, and eventually became the vice chief of the state channel. He took off quickly from there and moved on to state censors, the then-SARFT, and the Ministry of Propaganda.

It was in 2007, says Caixin (in an article already deleted), that Li hoped to join the Central Standing Committee of the Communist Party, but was hindered by his rivals, who tipped off ministers that his daughter was studying in the UK thanks to illicit “sponsorship” and his brother, who was running an advertising agency, was also benefiting from his positions.

Li’s trouble, however, was “handled, thanks to a senior leader’s help,” according to a source of Caixin. This “senior leader” is now believed to be none other than Zhou Yongkang, once henchman-in-chief of China’s sprawling security apparatus, and whose power network has been steadily eroded since retirement via a series of arrests and investigations (Zhou himself has not been seen in public since December).

Zhou Yongkang and Bo Xilai – two ex-Politburo heavyweights, now tainting anyone in their midst

The source, however, could not confirm how close exactly the two were, nor the validity of the rumor that Li introduced Jia Xiaoye, the then-CCTV Finance Channel producer, to Zhou, 28 years her senior; the pair later married.

On June 14, just three days after the capture of Rui Chenggang, Li was announced together with Jiang Jiemin and Wang Yongchun, two former chiefs from the CNPC, as being formally investigated. Both had worked for many years with Zhou.

~

While at Yale for a year in 2005 – he is still a World Fellow – Rui was remembered as a self-styled fenqing (“angry youth”), promoting and defending the motherland on a personal mission, whenever he heard “anti-China” voices. He took one law professor to task for calling China “not a democratic country”; Rui argued “Americans always think there’s only one type of democracy, which is the American kind. But democracy has different meanings and different stages.”

On his popular blog, a large part of which is devoted to conversations and photos with his star-studded Rolodex, Rui’s best-known piece is still the one published in 2007, calling for Starbucks to be ejected from the Forbidden City. (That didn’t prevent Rui from having his cake while eating it, boasting of email exchanges with Jim Donald, the coffee chain’s new CEO, as if the pair were close friends.)

Indeed, according to one guest who shared a banqueting table with Rui, the host frequently referred to former US President Bill Clinton as “a very good friend of mine.” Like most of his associates, which once included Kevin Rudd, George W. Bush and Warren Buffet, Clinton seems unlikely to come to the defense of his “friend” in his hour of need.

Former Rui associates include Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Rupert Murdoch and Henry Kissinger

Question marks even surround the true extent of Rui’s wealth. The TV star, who purportedly enjoys an official salary of around 150,000 RMB a year, is known for his cost-cutting ways. At the aforementioned banquet, a well-lubricated Rui is said to have finished two bottles of wine before a Sinopec executive at the table that he could polish off a third. The stake Rui demanded? A Sinopec card, so he could fill up for free in perpetuity.

If that seems grasping for someone who famously drives a foreign-made Jaguar, it may be worth noting that surface is very often illusory, especially in China. One user of Zhihu – a kind of Chinese Quora – claims his client was constantly being hassled to lend his car, a Land Rover, to a wealthy neighbor: one Rui Chenggan.

And perhaps due to his domestic celebrity, Rui sometimes over-estimated his influence abroad. A hotel management student at the University of Nevada recalled that, when Rui stayed at the Las Vegas hotel where she was interning, he made an indecent proposal. When she declined Rui’s offer, the host allegedly became incensed at what he inferred as the suggestion he couldn’t afford the asking price.

According to a PR manager for Emirates Airline, Rui purchased an economy-class ticket to visit Brazil but demanded a free upgrade to first class. Unsurprisingly, he was rejected, but took his grievance to Weibo (writing that “Emirates’s A380 feels really so-so. Although the plane is a bit bigger and looks new, there’s no enhancement to comfort and the space division makes one feel suppressed… Emirates’ trademark fake-mahogany interior feels like only faux luxury”).

Li Yong, the deputy director also arrested, never even made it to Brazil: he was reportedly stopped at customs en route to report on the BRICS summit, though it’s not clear what exactly for. The local rumor mill suggests his arrest may actually be unrelated to Guo’s; the two are said to dislike one another.

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players” was one of several Shakespeare quotations Rui was fond of tossing into speeches. (In his autobiography, Rui professes to be able to recite entire sections of Shakespeare, Francis Bacon and Bertrand Russell). Alas, it seems that Rui has now exited the stage, apparently pursued by a bear even he can’t tame.

Follow Valentina @valentinaluo (H/T RFH)