Zhao Wei shot to fame in the late 1990s in China’s most successful television series ever, My Fair Princess. Since then, she’s progressed from being an A-list actress to director, pop singer and businesswoman.
Such success under Chairman Deng Xiaoping’s policy of “opening up” China and embracing the incentives of private enterprise made Zhao very wealthy.
But her business empire struck trouble under Xi Jinping. Zhao was accused of being unpatriotic for hiring a Taiwanese actor to play a leading actor in a 2016 film. Beijing had that choice overturned.
Shortly after, Zhao’s business acquisitions began to attract close regulatory and taxation scrutiny. Last month a public relations agency she owns became embroiled in a nationalistic scandal after one of its clients – actor Zhang Zhehan – took a selfie while visiting Japan’s Yasukuni war dead shrine.
On Saturday, reports emerged on Chinese news sites that Zhao had fled the country on a private jet and was spotted at Bordeaux airport in France, where she and her husband Huang Youlong own a vineyard.
Now Zhao appears to have become the highest-profile victim of a Chinese Communist Party crackdown on celebrities and billionaires.
Commies hate alternative power centers, be they uncontrolled businesses, churches, or celebrities. Or, on university campuses, things like fraternities.