China has a problem. It’s not so much the middle-income trap typical of nations struggling to transition from a medium-income to high-income economy, although that may soon come. Rather, it is the middle-freedom trap.
Put simply, more Chinese people are accessing free market choices that were once reserved for the wealthiest — and for those most loyal to the Communist Party. And they are making choices that undermine Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s desperate need for obedience in service of his not-so-dreamy authoritarian system.
More specifically, many Chinese people are now doing what lots of Americans do: fixating on popular celebrities and their respective products. This has officials increasingly concerned.
In an interview posted on the website of China’s top government disciplinary organization, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, a party apparatchik explains the problem. As reported by the South China Morning Post, Jiang Yu explains that “the entertainment industry has become over-commercialized and capitalized.” He says these celebrities are generating a fan culture and negative impact thanks to their “low personal qualities, indifference to the rule of law, and loss of integrity.”
Yu continues, “Some artists with low quality and poor ability level can become popular overnight, and they frequently occupy the hot search list.” He explains that this is “the result of capital chasing profits. Capital captures the irrational psychology and needs of fans, creates various ‘superstars.'”
At first glance, it’s easy to laugh at this rhetoric. Many of us would likely agree that some American artists of “low quality and poor ability level can become popular overnight.” But vacuous celebrity culture is perhaps a necessary evil within a free society in which personal wealth affords personal choices in the pursuit of happiness. The Chinese Communist Party takes a different perspective. Yu explains that the current situation is “clearly a matter that violates the laws of literature and art and the fundamental interests of the people.”
Put simply, Xi’s regime is concerned that a growing number of China’s 1.4 billion citizens prefer celebrities to an avalanche of Communist propaganda. To admit it in so many words would be impossible — hence the pretense that celebrities are secretly manipulating people. But there is a broader trend here: a direct connection between China’s genocidal reeducation of the Uyghurs, its attempted indoctrination of Hong Kong students, its newly announced one-hour-a-day restriction on video game playing by minors, its gutting of capitalist entrepreneurship, and its abrupt disappearing of celebrities such as Zhao Wei.
When it comes to the Uyghurs, it’s the concern of an identity, community, and faith that give meaning apart from Xi’s Communist collective. When it comes to Hong Kong students, it’s the concern that young people in an internationally connected city might be tempted by democracy unless they are brainwashed at an early age. When it comes to video games, it’s the concern that young Chinese people aren’t paying enough attention to become Xi’s newest drones. When it comes to the disappearing acts, it’s the concern that unless non-party approved celebrities are banished from the popular court, their reach and influence will grow exponentially.
Threading all these concerns together, we see a regime that is at once immensely powerful and profoundly insecure in the face of its own people.
