Weekly Watch on China 20211123–20211219
- Not Beautiful
What happened: A very successful photographer in fashion industry, ChenMan, produced a series of photos for Dior, which seemed “ugly” to many Chinese netizens.
Some professional photoers said that Chen is really a good one, and some of her photos are actually quite beautiful. But, still, Dior’s photo set is indeed not very comforting.
The most common critic is that she is trying to please the western stereotype of Chinese women, making her another culture “hanjian”(traitor). ChenMan apologized later.
However, her former art products also been put out for criticizing, like the pic below.
The controversial elements of this pic is that ChenMan showed the Young Pioneers(少先队员) in a rather erotic way, which is definitely not suitable to “artfully describe” kids between 6–12.
This event can be seen as a latest episode of a series about Chinese netizens trying to show China issues in a more “Chinese” way, i.e, to show the westerners how real China is and how beautiful China is.
2.Ever Grande defaulted, at end.
Dec 3rd, 8:00PM, Ever Grande put out a notice on HK Stock Exchange information disclosure website, literally saying that Ever Grande defaulted on the liabilities. At 9:00 PM, Guangdong Provincial Government issued a notice on the official site, stating that it would send a group of officers to Ever Grande to deal with the default issues, per Ever Grande’s request.
So it finally came, what next? Ever Grande’s default seemed to be inevitable, and is expected by many financial professionals. The default will definitely send a shock wave to all the investors, and there are already some conspiracy theories that Chinese Government and Ever Grande has been working together to rob the wealth of foreign investors.
Real Estate companies faced pressure, fore sure. They will find a hard time to finance the developing projects, and there might be some conflicts between the developers and home buyers, as defaults on finishing home building will happen for sure.
3. Wang Leehom Divorced and His wife posted long weibo to expose his unfaithful behavior
Another idol failed. Wang Leehom’s wife posted a 5000 words weibo, accusing him of cold violence, calling prostitutes during the marriage, having sex with the fans and other female stars who is also married, etc. In one word, Wang Leehom is an unfaithful husband.
The wife also implicated that Wang is gay, by saying that Wang’s dance teacher is very unhappy about Wang getting married, thinking that “he(dance teacher) is with him(Wang Leehom)”. She also encouraged Wang to be real to himself and don’t take judgement from the worldly people too seriously.
Wang Leehom was once a very popular male star among Chinese people. He was rumored to be a gay friend with Li Yundi, who was nick named as “Piano Prince” in China(You can check Li Yundi’s report on Weekly Watch on China 20211011–20211025) and was arrested for calling prostitution.
It’s very interesting and even surprising to see so many stars flopping, or public image collapsing(人设崩塌）. There are even some conspiracy theories that CCP is trying to “clean” the Chinese entertainment industry by destroying the public images of as many stars as possible. But, anyway, they deserved to be criticized and judged for unfaithfulness.
Finally, you could always find some netizen making fun of CCP with almost every shocking news. This time, one weibo read like this:”The wife gave birth to 3 babies but still ended in being disposed like rubbish. How could you persuade other Chinese females to really follow the 3 kids policy?”(Beijing has issued one policy to encourage young couples to have 3 babies).
4.Lenovo In Trouble.
Lenovo, once the China star corporation, was criticized harshly by Sima Nan. Sima criticized Lenovo for a lot of reasons, like there was corruption when Lenovo implemented the reform in 1990s, the executive team’s salaries took nearly 30% of Lenovo’s net income, etc.
The public image of Lenovo was already notorious these years, but now it’s the worst. Lenovo was once a star company in China, and the founder Liu Chuanzhi was very popular among Chinese people in 1990s and 2000s. However, Liu once said “Lenovo is an international corporation rather than Chinese corporation”, irritating lots of netizens.
Lenovo was even ridiculed as “The consciousness of U.S”, which indicated that the corporation has exploited China market to subsidy U.S market.
More interestingly, Hu Shuli, the founder of Caixin Media Group, came to help Liu Chuanzhi by saying that we should not pay too much attention to the reform issues as CCP has already put some conclusion on it. It was simply an necessary error in a less developed society.
Of course, some net commentators criticized Hu Shuli to be the representative of capital moguls.
Lenovo model was called “comprador model”, which means it was acting like the bridge between foreigners and Chinese. That’s a good way to say it. The bad words can be like, it is taking advantage of the information gap between China and the more developed world(in 1990s and 2000s), exploiting the Chinese people, and try its best to please the foreign masters. In another word, the comprador model is a business done by traitors. I’m sure you’ll see lots of traitors in the near future.
