Zhang Ziyi and China ’ s Celebrity – Philanthropy Scandals

Zhang Ziyi is arguably China’s most famous female celebrity, being ranked after basketball player, Yao Ming, at number two on Forbes’s (mainland) China Celebrity List in 2009 and 2010 (‘2010 Forbes China Celebrity List’ 2010). Forbes issued its inaugural list of China’s top 100 power-ranking celebrities in 2004, demonstrating the growing importance of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in global cultural markets. As with the US list, China’s celebrities are ranked by combining income from salaries and endorsements with the number of times they appear in various media formats (Jeffreys & Edwards 2010: 2).

formal apology for World War II-era military atrocities. These atrocities included the massacre of an estimated 300,000 people in Nanjing between late 1937 and early 1938, and the abuse of thousands of Chinese women as sex slaves. In this context, Zhang's portrayal of a woman selling her virginity to the highest Japanese bidder was viewed as a national insult (Bezlova 2006; 'China Bans Memoirs of a Geisha' 2006;'China Cancels Release of "Memoirs of a Geisha "' 2006). More recently, Zhang Ziyi has been called 'unpatriotic and shameless' for becoming engaged to an Israeli venture capitalist, Vivi Nevo, and enabling the paparazzi to circulate semi-nude photographs of the couple sunbaking on a beach (Song et al. 2010;Tan 2009).
Along with the taint of sexual promiscuity, Zhang Ziyi became the focus of intense public scrutiny in the PRC between January and March 2010 for allegedly defaulting on a pledge to donate one million yuan to the Sichuan earthquake disaster-relief fund. The earthquake of 12 May 2008, which measured 7.8 on the Richter Scale, not only killed an estimated 70,000 people and left five million homeless ('Sichuan Earthquake: Facts and Figures' 2009) (Zhou 2010a(Zhou , 2010b. This paper examines the politics of philanthropy in contemporary China with reference to the Zhang Ziyi scandal and its Sichuan earthquake disaster-relief precursors. It first 2 By way of comparison, the total number of donations in the USA and the UK in 2006 amounted to 2.2 percent and 0.9 percent of GDP respectively (National Philanthropic Trust 2009; 'UK Charitable Donors' n.d.). The estimated figure of total donations in Australia in 2004 was 0.68 percent of GDP (Australian Government Department of Family and Community Services 2005). explains how the scandal came to public attention and the nature of its development and resolution. It then locates the origins of that controversy in an escalating series of scandals associated with the disaster-relief efforts, in order to demonstrate how public distrust of the wealthy and famous poses problems for the development of a philanthropic culture in China. Critics of US-based celebrities often claim that celebrity philanthropy is a cynical marketing exercise designed to improve a star's brand power and an apolitical mode of philanthropy that thrives on adoring fans, not on accountability (Wood 2007). In contrast, I show that public individuals who engage in mediatized philanthropic activities in the PRC are subject to intense public scrutiny and demands for accountability. Moreover, rather than exposing the self-centred egoism and fallibility of modern-day celebrities, the nature of those demands highlights the problems surrounding recent calls to cultivate a philanthropic citizenry in present-day China.

Zhang Ziyi's celebrity and philanthropy scandals
On 12 May 2008, when the Sichuan earthquake took place, Zhang Ziyi was at the Cannes International Film Festival. Upon hearing of that disaster, which triggered an outpouring of nationalist sentiment in China (Watts 2008), Zhang initiated three philanthropic activities to assist the relief effort. First, she announced that she would personally donate one million yuan to the disaster-relief fund, citing the traditional Chinese saying: 'guojia you nan, pifuyouze' (When the country is in trouble, everyone must do their duty) ('Zhang Ziyi xuanbujuan 100 wan' 2008). Second, she established the Ziyi Zhang Foundation, a non-profit charity organization registered under the laws of California, USA, with a bank account for donors to deposit funds for transfer to the Chinese Red Cross Foundation (Care for Children 2010). Finally, Zhang hosted a fundraising event at Cannes, which journalists claimed raised between US$500,000 and seven million dollars Sichuan Earthquake Donations' 2010. Zhang Ziyi became the focus of intense public scrutiny in January 2010 for allegedly defaulting on her pledge to donate one million yuan to the disaster-relief fund and misrepresenting her other philanthropic activities. The ensuing donation-gate scandal followed speculation about another scandal involving Zhang Ziyi and hints of sexual impropriety-the so-called 'black paint incident,' a series of events that took place on the evening of 23 December 2009. A group of unidentified men entered the lobby of the Park Hyatt hotel in Beijing, where Zhang reportedly owns an apartment. They demanded that security guards tell them where the actor resided, claiming that she had seduced a married man and cheated other people of their money by accepting gifts worth more than US$29 million from him ('Who's Behind the Zhang Ziyi "Black Paint Incident"?' 2009;Zhou 2010b). Shortly after, another group of unidentified men drove up to the hotel and splashed black paint on a giant OMEGA advertisement board featuring Zhang Ziyi. These events were observed by a waiting crowd of paparazzi who had gathered at the Park Hyatt following a tip-off that Hong Kong actor, Maggie Cheung, and her German boyfriend, Ole Scheeren, were getting engaged at a restaurant in the hotel that evening (Huang 2010). The black paint incident sparked speculation in the press about who had orchestrated the incident and why. It also generated debate on Internet sites, initially on Tianya.cn, which is China's biggest blogging forum, about Zhang Ziyi's moral character. This speculation prompted an unspecified number of netizens to start investigating the actor's life, resulting in the discovery of discrepancies relating to her philanthropic activities (Huang 2010).
An article posted on the Tianya bulletin board system in late January 2010 disputed Zhang Ziyi's claim to have raised over one million dollars towards the earthquake disaster-relief fund, saying that she had only contributed 840,000 yuan of that money ('Zhang Ziyi 100 wan' 2010). This claim prompted other members of the public to contact the PRC's Ministry of Civil Affairs, the Chinese Red Cross Foundation, and other organizations, in diverse efforts to verify (or disprove) Zhang's philanthropic track record ('Donation Details Released' 2010). Apart from confirming that Zhang Ziyi had only donated 840,000 yuan to the disaster-relief fund, in two separate payments of 400,000 and 440,000 yuan, these investigations revealed that money raised by Zhang at the Cannes International Film Festival amounted to the paltry sum of US$1,300-not the more than US$500,000 reported in the media. The Ziyi Zhang Foundation was also called into disrepute via suggestions that its lack of transparency implied that it was merely a front for charity fraud and personal profiteering (Zhou 2010b).
Zhang and her agent, Ji Lingling, had already attempted to quash associated criticisms by issuing a public statement denying net-based allegations and promising that accounting records would be made available to the public on 3 February ('Zhang Ziyi jui dizhen' 2010; 'Zhang Ziyi shan kuan zhijin xialuobuming ' 2010). However, Zhang's subsequent silence on the issue, and Ji's failure to provide the relevant records by the specified date, simply added to mounting public criticism of her 'fake philanthropy' (Schwankert 2010). Ji's ultimately bungled attempt to 'clear the record' added more fuel to the controversy. On 5 February, he issued a statement to Sina.com, one of China's most popular web portals, stating that Zhang Ziyi had contributed the promised one million yuan in cash to the disaster-relief fund. On 8 February, Ji retracted this statement by making a public apology to the effect that Zhang had just contributed another 160,000 yuan to the Chinese Red Cross Foundation after discovering that her management team had been careless. As a result, they had failed to pay the third and 2010. Zhang attributed the delay to her failure to follow-up on instructions that she had given to staff and denied accusations of fraud and embezzlement. Regarding confusion about the amount of money raised in Cannes, Zhang stated that she had only raised US$1,300 in cash because of the hasty nature of that fundraising event. Although only US$39,000 of pledges from a total of US$400,000 had been honoured, she was still negotiating a project with potential donors, whose names she was unable to reveal for privacy reasons (Zhou 2010b). Responding to accusations of embezzlement, and inadvertently offering another example of her ineffective philanthropic efforts, Zhang Ziyi noted that a full-page advertisement paid for by the Hollywood Reporter, in which the editor-in-chief and Zhang had appealed for funds for the relief of the Sichuan earthquake, had not induced anyone to contribute to her Foundation ('Q & A: Zhang  Public Image Awards' 2010). This award arguably demonstrates Zhang's masterful manipulation of the public from the start to the end of the donation-gate scandal.
However, a more plausible explanation for that scandal is the one Zhang provided in interview with the China Daily (Zhou 2010b). She had neither the experience nor the professional team required to manage the issues and delays imposed by the lack of a developed institutional framework for philanthropy in China.
In any case, the 'fall-out' from the donation-gate scandal indicates that it offers more than a tale of personal redemption. Concerned netizens promptly proceeded to question the disaster-relief efforts of a wide range of Chinese entertainment stars. Actor Li Bingbing was accused of only donating 500 yuan out of a pledged contribution of 300,000 yuan. Singer Hu Yanbing allegedly donated a mere 50 yuan of a publicized 50,000 yuan. Zhao Wei, a movie star, reportedly only gave 20,000 yuan of a 100,000 yuan pledge and actor Liu Xiaoqing was criticized for donating 4,300 yuan rather than 100,000 yuan as promised Sichuan Earthquake Donations' 2010. As the escalating nature of such allegations on interactive media forums would suggest, celebrity philanthropy in China is a political affair.

The politics of philanthropy in reform-era China
Although China has a long history of philanthropy ( Overview' 2006). As the recent nature of these activities suggests, thirty years ago there was no private wealth in China, but now private wealth exists and some of the new rich are prepared to give away voluntarily portions of their surplus money (Mackey 2005 'We need to concentrate on building a xiaokang society of a higher standard in an all-round way,' which means an estimated per-capita gross domestic product of more than US$2,000 by the year 2020 ('All About "Xiaokang" ' 2002). The current 'Hu Jintao-Wen Jiabao' leadership's vision of xiaokang socialism continues to evoke sustained economic growth as a means to realize prosperity, but it also sees the need for that prosperity to be broadly distributed and for economic growth to be balanced with social equality and environmental protection (Jeffreys & Sigley 2009: 11).
In Television Station disaster-relief gala (Fong 2008;McGinnis et al. 2009). This contribution was viewed as providing a concrete demonstration of the company's claim to 'give back' some of its profits by 'zealously' participating in 'public welfare activities and philanthropy' ('Brief Introduction' 2005  China's netizens view public criticism as a positive incitement for public individuals to do more and better rather than a potential or actual discouragement.
An evident problem here is that the effective transposition of philanthropy from a desire to assist the public good into an obligation to 'give back' undermines both the principle that people are free to determine how much of their resources they wish to use on 'public endeavours' and the underlying voluntarism of philanthropy. If public individuals are obliged to give back more and publicly, rather than doing so voluntarily based on personal sentiment and a sense of reward, then, philanthropy is simply a different and largely unexamined means for ensuring the redistribution of wealth.
Alternatively, it places a populist and non-governmental tax on fame and success rather than surplus capital per se.