Over the past month, it was literally a ride of giddying highs and crushing lows.
After what felt like a promising sign after fans had contacted Ministry of Culture and Tourism – MCT & the National Radio and Television Administration – NRTA , and had received confirmation that Zhang Zhe Han is not officially on any banned celebrity list – fans started to dare to hope if this information is what we require to get his works reinstated on platforms.
But perhaps the powers that are behind his downfall took exception to this development, and on the evening of Nov 23, CAPA released their 9th list of banned streamers via their streaming committee 网络表演（直播）and this time, chose to throw in 3 celebrity names for good measure – K Wu, Zheng S and our Zhang Zhe Han. This announcement came with a resounding clap of thunder of being immediately reposted by all the prominent blue V media accounts – giving it a very official stamp of approval. It really felt like ‘You said he wasn’t on a list? Here, we will put him on a list.‘ The part pertaining to ZZH reiterated about this ‘crime’ being his visit to the war shrine which created ‘uproar’, ‘hurt public sentiment’, dedicated most of the entire paragraph about his fans behavior to ‘forcibly clarify’, ‘distorting truth and history’, and said ‘most of the fans are underage and unruly’ who quarrel online with fans of others…
I think many of us all felt pretty crushed by this when the reports came piling on.
But ironically, it was precisely this list that enabled the next unforeseen development.
All this time, there had only been whispers of such a list, but now that there is an ‘official’ one, was exactly what one Mr Li Xue Zheng 李学政 was able to begin his incredible task of, taking CAPA to task.
He started with the all important question about the process of how CAPA came up with this list, being only a civilian association and their accountability of this ‘judgement’ to the public. Led by this industry veteran, fans and ‘passer-bys’ were astounded by revelation after revelation, with netizens joining in to dig up sordid details that surrounded this association – for example, how a banned streamer managed to make a comeback after ‘having a meal’ with the CAPA Secretary 潘燕 (中国演出行业协会秘书长).
Notably this same Secretary was interviewed back in February, stated that the past actions of celebrities will not be judged, and the association’s new guidelines of conduct will only begin on March 1 2021. However, this association conveniently ignored their own words as they passed judgement on ZZH based on 3 year old travel photos outside the war shrine.
CAPA maintained their silence as netizens started to look into many of their high ranking members as they discovered staggering large amounts of association fees and even larger investments into member companies in the association, coming directly from Japan. Intimidation tactics to Mr Li bore no fruit as he continued to question them and wait for their response. Some members just closed their weibo accounts in a bid to prevent further digging. Mr Li questioned their own ethics level for them to take the moral high ground to become a judge for others. The CAPA website proceeded to remove the names of their general committee members – and refused to list the names of their ethics committee, which other associations are open about.
No plain sailing for Mr Li in his quest to continue his relentless discussion about CAPA. #人民的公义# #著名制片人李学政质疑中演协惩罚劣迹艺人程序正义# these weibo topic tags were suppressed and were never given any hot search to limit views and engagement despite very high readership and discussions. This did not stop the fiery spirit from blazing on, as blue Vs turned their eyes away from this discussion, red Vs started to pass the torch of spreading these information to the masses. It was also very obvious that there was a lack of voices heard from within the C ent industry itself – nobody seemed to dare to go up against this association.
For fans, most of us were jubilant. For months, ‘clarification’ posts for ZZH and these accounts had been heavily censored, views were restricted, and accounts got suspended in batches for long periods of time. Here at last, was a heavyweight that refused to back down from his corner. Even after getting his posts and video deleted at first, Mr Li protested and weibo quickly restored his content. The usual tactics of decreasing the likes on his posts and limiting views continued but at least weibo allowed his content to remain.
Mr Li points out that fans doing clarification is not meddling with society order, and that every person should have the right to defend oneself. What ZZH has endured, months being forced into silence, unable to even have any platform to redress his grievances.
For those who are thinking about Twitter or IG, allow me to remind you that Zheng S did just that, and it did her no favors to be using foreign social media accounts – just by using these platforms, nobody in mainland China was willing to even take her words seriously.
By Nov 25, forces at play started to attempt to smear Mr Li’s reputation as well. This led him to become more determined than ever to look into them.
He did a shoutout and offered his legal team to ZZH to sue CAPA, and managed to get in touch with ZZH’s family. We finally had some heartbreaking direct updates from his family member who spoke to Mr Li – that the past few months had been hell for them and all is not well. Mr Li continued to pursue this from a legal angle, and championed for the basic rights of every citizen.
Mr Li emphasized that any punishment needs proper legislative and administrative steps taken, to ensure that no innocent man should be declared guilty without proof. He also mentioned that CAPA’s own articles have cautioned against using unsubstantiated rumors as a basis for judging someone, nor using public sentiment to mete out punishment.
“不能单靠舆论讨论来惩罚，这点在他们自己的文章中也明确提到，不能单靠网络爆料来一刀切的惩罚”
He asked for more big V accounts to join in this discussion, and notes that everyone still seems afraid. Unfortunately its already Dec 22, and the main media that has contacted him on Nov27 still has not managed to publish many articles shining a light on this.
More discoveries about other questionable related associations which have sought punishment for celebs came to the forefront, as other netizens find online evidence of transgressions of high ranking association members, such as lawsuits, misleading educational certifications, and literal 1-man CEO of several ‘media companies’ that looks suspiciously like YXH.
This very same 中网工委 had also passed their ‘judgement’ on ZZH back in August, when they ‘recommended’ that his weibo account and 工作室 accounts be deleted and not merely suspended – which weibo had executed immediately. And one of the committee members 王一鸣 had claimed that there was no ‘official’ 封杀 order of anyone, when ZZH was one of those who had been banned on all platforms, down to the level where even H**wei phones won’t allow his name entered as the phone nickname.
What is strange was, his yellow V verified account lost the V right after netizens questioned his education credentials and he only showed a donation certificate from the university. His current active weibo has been renamed/changed from 中网工委王一鸣 to 专精特新投资人王一鸣 and the previous account that this account has tagged before no longer exists, along with all the old posts – is this evidence removal? This current account has no posts in November.
CCAA quietly posted on their website, and apologised for the creation of their sub branch, with the account name @中网工委, and ‘misled the public’. It was later renamed to @中国文化管理协会网络文化工委 – with such a long official looking title and support from many the ‘official’ news outlets ( blue Vs) , one can really be mistaken that they are an official government entity.
It seemed that for a short period they also renamed the account with an inexplicable name, as if to mock netizens.
Currently this weibo account is still suspended/deleted when I checked on Dec 22. However, another @中国文化管理协会网络文化委员会 account still exists.
So was this really a case of a small association run by a few people, made to ‘look big and official’ because they brought along their own army of blue V accounts? CAPA is undoubtedly a more complicated beast than this, but is it built on the same fundamental model?
What started as a simple question from Mr Li, has started a wave that has built momentum, and has turned into a whirlpool of discussion about legal rights violation, overall net climate and antis’ trolling uncivil behavior, overstepping of authority, corruption, market monopoly…
In the evening of Nov 30, we heard that one of the celebs have gone to make an appeal within the 10 days appeal period given by CAPA. What we learnt was procedure was severely lacking on their part.
To be continued.
Zhang Zhehan 