China's Magic

China's Leading Actress Fan Bingbing Has Vanished. 

By ELI MEIXLER / HONG KONG

In past years, actress Fan Bingbing was a regular presence on film festival red carpets and fashion catwalks from Barcelona to Busan. 

And then, suddenly, she wasn’t.
Film fans are expressing alarm at Fan’s disquieting recent disappearance from public life: she was last seen on July 1, while visiting a children’s hospital. 

Her account on China’s popular Sina Weibo social media network, where she has 63 million followers, has been silent since July 23.
Speculation is linking the disappearance of Fan, one of cinema’s top-earners, to an alleged tax evasion scandal at a time when China’s state-controlled film industry is cutting back on bloated budgets and star-driven blockbusters.
If so, it would be a swift reversal for the celluloid superstar, whose rapid ascent as an actress and fashion icon seemed eclipsed only by her potential. 

A Chinese state news report assured readers last week that matters surrounding the actress—who featured in 2017’s TIME 100—were “under control.” 

But like its subject, the report quickly disappeared.
Here’s what we know:

A rising star
Not long ago, Fan, 36, seemed poised to become one of the biggest crossover stars in the world: a China-born, English-speaking workaholic armed with a formidable combination of acting, singing, and modeling skills.
Fan became a Chinese household name in 1999 with the TV series My Fair Princess, but broke into stardom in 2003’s Cell Phone, the year’s highest-grossing Chinese film, for which she won Best Actress honors at the Hundred Flowers Awards, China’s equivalent of the Golden Globes.
Fan won again in 2008, and began to pick up leading roles and international festival awards from Taiwan, Tokyo, and San Sebastián. 

In 2016, she earned $17 million, according to Forbes, making her the world’s fifth-highest paid actress. 

The following year, she sat on the Cannes Film Festival Official Competition Jury, where she promised to assess films “from an Asian perspective.”
She also logged side roles American films like X-Men: Days of Future Past and Ironman 3 after, as she told TIME last year, “[Hollywood] wanted to add Asian faces and found me.” 

It was effective: her brief role as “Blink” helped propel X-Men to a $39.35 million opening weekend in China.
Earlier this year, she was cast in 355, an espionage thriller, among a multinational ensemble that included Jessica Chastain, Penélope Cruz, Lupita Nyong’o, and Marion Cotillard. 

Her place in the pantheon of leading actors seemed secure. 

“In 10 years’ time…I’m sure I will be the heroine of X-Men,” she predicted to TIME last February.

A hint of scandal
But her once certain ascension was jeopardized in May, when CCTV presenter Cui Yongyuan leaked a pair of contracts that allegedly showed Fan double-billing an unidentified production, first for 10 million renminbi ($1.6 million), and then for 50 million renminbi ($7.8 million) for the same work.
The documents appeared to reveal an arrangement, known as “yin-yang” contracts, wherein one contract reflects an actor’s actual earnings while a second, lower figure is submitted to tax authorities, the BBC reported. 

According to the South China Morning Post, Cui then called for the Chinese authorities to “step up regulations on show business.”
In June, the Jiangsu Province State Administration of Taxation opened a tax evasion investigation focusing on the entertainment industry. 

Fan’s film studio, which denied the allegations, is based in Jiangsu, according to the Post.
The lack of an official statement on her whereabouts has spurred tabloid speculation that Fan was banned from acting or placed under house arrest. 

Last week, according to the Guardian, a report in China’s state-run Securities Journal claimed that Fan would “accept legal judgement,” though the article did not specify her offense, and was removed shortly after publication.
The whiff of impropriety has already impacted her cachet: Australian vitamin brand Swisse suspended use of Fan’s image in advertisements, while her name was removed from promotional materials for the upcoming Unbreakable Spirit, starring Bruce Willis.
Adding insult to financial and professional injury, the BBC reports that Fan has been rated last in a ranking of Chinese celebrities’ personal integrity and charitable work, scoring zero out of 100 in the 2017-2018 China Film and Television Star Social Responsibility Report published Tuesday by a Chinese university. 

That’s despite the fact that Fan co-founded a charity to provide surgery for children with congenital heart disease in rural Tibet, which she called her “greatest achievement” in a 2003 interview with the Financial Times. 

In 2015, she also donated a million renminbi ($146,000) to relatives of firemen killed in the Tianjin chemical warehouse disaster; the following year a different index listed Fan among the 10 most philanthropic Chinese celebrities.

A cautionary tale
Other, more salacious theories have claimed to account for Fan’s fall from grace.
Last year, she filed a defamation lawsuit against exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, who alleged sexual affairs between celebrities, including Fan, and top Chinese Communist Party officials. 

And when the yin-yang contracts came to light, Fan was shooting a sequel to Cell Phone that Cui, her CCTV accuser, complained bore an uncomfortable resemblance to his own life, the Post reports.
Actor Jackie Chan has meanwhile dispelled rumors that he recommended Fan seek asylum in the U.S.
She may also be the victim of industry belt-tightening, following a series of costly flops. 

Last year, the $150 million, Matt Damon-led The Great Wall, China’s most expensive film ever, recouped just $18.4 million in its North American opening. 

In July, the blockbuster Asura was promptly pulled from Chinese box offices after generating just $7.4 million. 

In June, the government instituted new salary ceilings on film and TV actors, blaming “sky-high” salaries and yin-yang contracts for creating a “distorted” culture of “money worship,” according to the BBC.
Fan’s plight also underscores fundamental divisions between Hollywood and the Chinese film industry, where state censors still exert considerable control over content and celebrate stars who advocate fealty to the Communist Party.
But Fan’s supporters have remain loyal, yearning for news or sight of the absent actress. 

“I have a hunch that you will be back, right?,” one posted on Weibo. 

“We’ll wait for you”

Bookseller Gui Minhai 'half free' after being detained in China for two years

Hong Kong publisher who specialised in books about China’s political elite vanished from Thailand in 2015
By Tom Phillips in Beijing

Earlier this week Chinese authorities claimed Gui had been released on 17 October although his daughter disputed that claim. 

A Swedish bookseller who spent more than two years in custody after his abduction by Chinese agents is now “half free”, a friend has claimed, amid suspicions he is still being held under guard by security officials in eastern China.
Gui Minhai, a Hong Kong-based publisher who specialised in books about China’s political elite, mysteriously vanished from his Thai holiday home in October 2015. 

He later reappeared in mainland China where he was imprisoned on charges relating to a deadly drunk-driving incident more than a decade earlier.
Gui’s disappearance – and that of four other booksellers, including one British citizen – was seen as part of a wider crackdown on Communist party opponents that has gripped China since Xi Jinping took power in 2012.
Details of Gui’s two-year detention have remained murky but he is understood to have been held for at least part of that time in the eastern port city of Ningbo. 

Earlier this week Chinese authorities claimed he had been released on 17 October, although Gui’s daughter, Angela, disputed that claim on Tuesday, telling the Guardian he had yet to contact her and appeared still to be in “some sort of custody”.
On Friday, after several days of uncertainty about Gui’s whereabouts, reports emerged that appeared to confirm his partial release.
Bei Ling, a Boston-based dissident writer and friend, said Gui was in Ningbo and living in rented accomodation. 

He said Gui held a 40-minute phone conversation with his daughter on Thursday night. 

However, Bei told the Hong Kong Free Press website that his friend was only “half free”.
Angela Gui told the Hong Kong broadcaster RTHK there were “many things that need to be clarified” about her father’s situation and declined to comment further. 

“She said she had received a phone call, but did not confirm it was from her father,” RTHK reported.
A spokesperson for Sweden’s foreign ministry said: “We have received reports from the Chinese authorities that Gui Minhai has been released and we’re doing our best to obtain more information.”
Activists suspect that rather than completely freeing Gui, Chinese authorities have moved him from a detention centre into what they call China’s “non-release release” system. 

Under this Kafka-esque system, regime opponents are nominally freed but in fact continue to live under the watch and guard of security agents.
“Non-release release” has been the fate of a number of those targeted as part of Xi’s campaign against human rights lawyers, which has seen some of the country’s leading civil rights attorneys spirited into secret detention before “reappearing” in a different form of captivity.
Bei told Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post Gui had informed relatives he wanted to travel to Germany: “But for now, he is not sure if the Chinese authorities will allow him to leave China.
“He will only enjoy true freedom if he is allowed to leave China. If he cannot leave China, he could end up just like Liu Xia,” Bei added, referring to the wife of the late Nobel laureate who has also been living under the watch of security agents since her husband’s death in July.

Speaking on Tuesday, the bookseller’s daughter said she was deeply concerned about his wellbeing: “He has allegedly been released but it looks like he is still in some sort of custody... the fact that nobody can contact him and nobody knows where he is, legally constitutes an enforced disappearance, again.”

Exactly what happened to Gui and his bookselling colleagues and why they were targeted remains a mystery. 

However, in June last year, one of the other abducted men, Lam Wing-kee, claimed he had been kidnapped by Chinese special forces as part of a coordinated effort to silence criticism of China’s leadership.
Patrick Poon, a Hong Kong-based activist for Amnesty International who is following the case, said: “Definitely he is still under surveillance otherwise the whole thing wouldn’t be so mysterious.”
“We still need to see whether the authorities will allow him to go [to Germany] and it seems to me that he will still be under surveillance for some time before he is allowed to go.”
Poon said it was also unclear whether Chinese authorities had placed conditions on Gui’s release such as “not disclosing what happened to him during his time in detention [or] requiring him not to talk about his case when he leaves China”.

Liu Xiaobo's widow reappears in YouTube video

Liu Xia resurfaces for the first time since her husband Liu Xiaobo's funeral amid concerns about her fate.
Aljazeera
Liu Xia was last seen in government-released images of Liu Xiaobo's funeral.

The widow of Chinese Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo has appeared for the first time since her husband's funeral in a video posted on YouTube, which is blocked in China.
Liu Xia's friends have raised concern about her fate, saying they have not been able to speak to her since her husband's sea burial on July 15.
She was last seen in government-released images of Liu Xiaobo's funeral.
"I am recovering in a province outside of Beijing. I ask you to give me time to mourn," said Liu in the minute-long video posted on Friday.
Dressed in a black t-shirt and black trousers, Liu Xia was sitting on a white sofa next to a coffee table while holding a lit cigarette.
"I will see you one day in top form. While Xiaobo was sick, he also looked at life and death with some distance, so I also have to readjust. I will be with you again when my situation generally improves," she said.
Liu Xia, 56, has been under effective house arrest since her husband, a prominent dissident since the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, won the Nobel Prize in 2010. 

He was sentenced to 11 years in jail on subversion charges in 2009.
Friends of the couple raised questions about whether Liu Xia made the comments in Friday's video out of her own free will.
"It is certain that she was forced by the authorities to make this video," Hu Jia, a Chinese dissident and friend of the couple, told the AFP news agency on Saturday.
"How can anyone who does not even enjoy freedom express her will freely?"
The name of the film-maker, the place and date of filming, were not specified, but it would be unusual for the video to be released without the knowledge of the authorities. 

Plainclothes security agents guard Liu Xia's Beijing apartment.
Jared Genser, Liu Xia's lawyer, who has filed a complaint to the United Nations, has accused the Chinese government of her "enforced disappearance".
Chinese authorities have said that Liu Xia was "free" and have told diplomats who asked about her whereabouts that her lack of communication was due to her desire to mourn in peace.
Before the death of her husband, Liu Xia had told diplomats and friends that she wished to leave China should Liu Xiaobo be released.
Liu had requested to receive treatment abroad after his terminal cancer diagnosis, a wish that friends believe was in reality for his wife's sake. 

The government, however, refused to release him.
He died aged 61 while still in custody at a Chinese hospital on July 13, becoming the first Nobel Peace Prize winner to die in custody since German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky in 1938.

China accused over 'enforced disappearance' of Liu Xiaobo's widow

Liu Xia not seen since sea burial of late Nobel peace prize winner in July

By Tom Phillips in Beijing

Liu Xia (centre, holding a portrait of Liu Xiaobo) has not been seen since Beijing released photos of her at her husband’s funeral. 

Chinese authorities are guilty of the Kafkaesque enforced disappearance of Liu Xia, the wife of late Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, the couple’s US lawyer has claimed.
Jared Genser, a Washington-based human rights attorney who has represented them since 2010, made the claim in a formal complaint submitted to the United Nations on Wednesday.

A plainclothes agent outside the Beijing apartment of Liu Xia, the wife of the late dissident Liu Xiaobo. 

Almost three weeks after the Chinese dissident became the first Nobel peace prize winner to die in custody since German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky – who died in 1938 after years in Nazi concentration camps – his widow’s precise whereabouts are a mystery.
Friends say the 56-year-old poet was initially forced to travel to southwest China with security agents, but may now have returned to the capital, where she has lived under virtual house arrest since her husband won the Nobel peace prize in December 2010.
Foreign journalists who have attempted to visit the couple’s Beijing flat have faced harassment and physical violence while Chinese officials have refused to answer questions on the subject.
Genser said Beijing’s continued persecution of his client took Communist party repression to an “incredibly disturbing new low” and constituted an enforced disappearance.
In his petition to the UN’s working group on enforced or involuntary disappearances, requesting “urgent intervention”, he wrote: “According to international law, an enforced disappearance involves (1) deprivation of liberty against the will of the person; (2) involvement of government officials; and (3) refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person.”
Genser told the Guardian: “It is crystal clear to me that what has happened to Liu Xia falls squarely and unequivocally within this definition.”
Liu Xia was last seen on 15 July when authorities released photographs showing her attending her husband’s controversial sea burial, which supporters suspect was devised to deny them a place to remember the democracy icon and his ideas.
“There has been no information as to where she is, who is detaining her or when she might reappear. [But] it is clear to me … that the Chinese government has her,” said Genser. 

“She continues to suffer enormously … I actually don’t think Kafka could have imagined a scenario as terrible as hers.”
Genser said he expected that, having received his complaint, the UN body would now ask Beijing to respond to claims that Chinese security forces were behind Liu Xia’s disappearance. 

He hoped the move would force Beijing to “reappear” Liu Xia, who has never been charged with any crime, and allow her to leave China. 

The United States, Germany and Britain are among the governments that have called for her release.
Genser also voiced support for a congressional push to rename the street on which China’s US embassy is located, in homage to the late democracy icon. 

According to the Washington Post, Chinese leaders are livid at the campaign and have been lobbying the Trump administration to veto the proposal. 

China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, recently warned the US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, that changing the street’s name from International Place to Liu Xiaobo Plaza would “seriously affect Chinese cooperation on major issues”.

Liu Xia and Liu Xiaobo

Genser called for similar moves in European capitals that might see Rue de Washington in Paris become the Rue de Liu Xiaobo and London’s Portland Place renamed Liu Xiaobo Place. 

“It is clear that the Chinese government would like to erase the memory of Liu Xiaobo from the world’s imagination. The idea … that every piece of mail that would go to a Chinese embassy in Washington, London and Paris would be [stamped with his name] would really be anathema to the Chinese government.”
Genser said that while his focus was freeing Liu Xia, the campaign was an effective way to pressure Beijing. 

“To me this is a means to an end. I’m not committed to having the street renamed.
“But if the government won’t relent … they are leaving advocates with really no option other than to go down this road.”
China’s foreign ministry, the only government body that regularly interacts with journalists, has repeatedly ignored questions about Liu Xia and Liu Xiaobo, who was serving an 11-year jail term for subversion when he was diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer in May.
Questions about their plight have been purged from official transcripts of its press conferences. 

“I do not know the information you mentioned and is not a diplomatic question,” foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a reporter from Sky News who inquired about Liu Xia’s whereabouts last week. 

“Next question.”

Widow of Nobel Laureate Feared ‘Disappeared’

Beijing Should Cease Harassment and Detention of Liu Xiaobo’s Supporters
HRW

Liu Xia is shown holding photos of her deceased husband, Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo. 

The Chinese authorities should immediately and unconditionally release Liu Xia, the wife of deceased Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo, Human Rights Watch said today. 

The government should also stop harassing and detaining Liu’s supporters for commemorating his death.
Since Liu Xiaobo’s funeral on July 15, 2017, following his death from complications of liver cancer on July 13, the authorities have refused to provide information on Liu Xia’s whereabouts, raising concerns that she has been forcibly disappeared.
“Liu Xia has been a prisoner of the state for years simply because of her association with a man whose beliefs the Chinese government cannot tolerate,” said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. 

“Her forced disappearance since Liu Xiaobo’s funeral heightens concerns about her well-being and safety.”
Liu Xia was last seen in an official photo taken on July 15, in which she and a few relatives are lowering an urn containing Liu Xiaobo’s ashes into the Pacific Ocean at a beach near Dalian, a city in northeast China. 

Since then, her friends and relatives in Beijing have not been able to reach her directly. 

According to international and Hong Kong media reports, on July 19, authorities have forcibly taken Liu Xia for a “vacation” in the southwestern province of Yunnan.
Liu Xia, 61, is a Beijing-based poet, artist, and photographer. 

She has published collections of poems and her photographic works have been exhibited in France, Italy, the United States, and other countries. 

Liu Xia met Liu Xiaobo through Beijing literary circles and married him when he was imprisoned in a re-education through labor camp in 1996.
Since December 2008, when Liu Xiaobo began serving his most recent sentence for allegedly inciting subversion, Liu Xia has been held arbitrarily under house arrest and deprived of almost all human contact except with close family and a few friends. 

Throughout Liu Xiaobo’s hospitalization, which began in June 2017, Liu Xia was prevented from speaking freely to family, friends, or the media. 

She is known to suffer from severe depression and a heart condition.
An enforced disappearance is defined under international law as the arrest or detention of a person by state officials or their agents followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty, or to reveal the person’s fate or whereabouts. 

Enforced disappearances place the victim at greater risk of abuse and inflict unbearable cruelty on family members and friends waiting to learn of their fate.
Since Liu Xiaobo’s death, Chinese authorities have also systematically prevented his supporters from holding commemorative activities. 

On July 18, police detained Dalian-based activists Jiang Jianjun and Wang Chenggang for throwing a bottle with a message to Liu at the beach near where Liu’s ashes were scattered. 

Jiang was later given 10 days’ administrative detention. 

It is unclear whether Wang has been released. 

Ding Jiaxi, a Beijing-based human rights lawyer, was detained at a Shenyang police station from July 13 to 15 after he protested in front of the hospital where Liu received treatment. 

Beijing police have held activist Hu Jia under house arrest since June 27 to prevent him from going to the Shenyang hospital or participating in memorial activities.
On July 19, as Liu Xiaobo’s supporters in Hong Kong, Melbourne, London, San Francisco, and elsewhere gathered to mark the seventh day of his death, a traditional Chinese memorial rite, police across China called, summoned, or visited activists at their homes, warning them not to join the commemoration. 

Those who have been harassed include Guangzhou-based activist Wu Yangwei (also known as Ye Du), writer Li Xuewen and rights lawyer Huang Simin, Hangzhou-based writers Wang Yongzhi (also known as Wang Wusi) and Wen Kejian, Shanghai-based activist Jiang Danwen, and activist Hua Chunhui, based in Wuxi, a city near Shanghai.
Liu Xiaobo’s death has also prompted new action by China’s internet censors, Human Rights Watch said. 

On the Twitter-like Chinese microblogging platform Weibo, “RIP,” and the candle emoji were censored. 

On WeChat, a social media platform with more than 700 million daily active users, the number of blocked word combinations have significantly increased, and images related to Liu were filtered even in private one-on-one chats, according to a study by the Canada-based organization Citizens Lab.
After announcing Liu Xiaobo’s death on July 13, Shenyang authorities arranged a private funeral that only Liu Xia, a few of Liu Xiaobo’s relatives, and some state security officials were allowed to attend. 

The funeral was followed by a sea burial.

Authoritie imposed these on the family to prevent having a gravesite that could become a place of pilgrimage for Liu’s supporters. 

Liu’s long-estranged brother, Liu Xiaoguang, later appeared at a government news conference thanking the Communist Party for its handling of Liu’s treatment and funeral.

“Chinese authorities may think they will succeed in expunging all memories of Liu Xiaobo and all he stood for,” Richardson said. 

“But in their torment of Liu Xia, their harassment of his friends, and their efforts to silence his supporters, all they do is inspire greater adherence to those ideas.”