Response to fallen idols and irrational fans

On Friday, the Cyberspace Administration of China issued a notice aimed at curbing the entertainment industry's fostering of an "irrational" fan culture.

The day before, iQiyi, a leading domestic video website, announced it would cancel its talent shows for the immediate future.

IQiyi has broadcast a number of popular talent shows such as Youth with You, which allowed viewers to vote for boy band contestants by purchasing products with voting QR codes.

In May, the Youth with You competition was severely criticized after some fan groups reportedly organized people to open milk bottles and pour away the milk just to scan the QR code to support their idol. Now, with iQiyi taking the lead in banning all its talent shows and popular vote campaigns, more video websites are expected to follow suit, and such practices will hopefully come to an end.

For too long, the entertainment industry has organized vote rallying to promote an idol. The introduction of popular votes was meant initially to grant the public a bigger say in evaluating talent, as well as granting the participating hopefuls an opportunity to call for public support. But the online platforms and management companies have engaged in rampant speculation to gain popular support for their talents and the pursuit of young fans has become a vicious competition, wasting money and resources.

But chaotic voting campaigns are only the tip of the iceberg, tax evasion by stars, "cultivating" underage people to be idols and misguiding youngsters to blindly worship idols are also issues that need to be addressed.

It should be noted that crackdowns have been launched on such activities in some parts of the world, even South Korea, which is famous for its entertainment industry. It passed the Culture and Arts Industry Development Act in 2019, which strictly limits the participation of underage persons in the industry. The same year its taxation department announced it would probe 122 stars suspected of tax evasion. In January this year, actor Jang Geun Suk's mother, who is his manager, was sentenced to 30 months in prison with a four-year reprieve and a 3 billion South Korean won ($257.1 million) fine for tax evasion.

On Friday morning, the Shanghai Municipal Taxation Administration announced actress Zheng Shuang should pay 299 million yuan ($46.1 million) in unpaid taxes, overdue fees and fines for tax evasion by signing false contracts.

Hopefully that marks a good beginning for cleaning up the entertainment industry.