The Economist - USA (2021-07-10)

42 China The Economist July 10th 2021

miners  could  not  functionwithoutcon­

verting  their  new  bitcoinsintoyuan.For

this  they  used  exchangesthathadmoved

offshore after the tradingban,butstilltar­

geted Chinese users. Thegovernmentmay

have  decided  that  to  ridChinaofcrypto

transactions, “mining hadtogo”,saysBob­

by Lee, who co­foundedChina’sfirstcryp­

tocurrency exchange (itwasforcedtoshut

in  2017).  He  now  runsBallet,anappthat

lets users manage theirdigitalcurrency.

Another  aim  may  havebeentoreduce

emissions.  The  Cambridgenumberssug­

gest  that  Chinese  miners used around

83 twh  of  electricity  a  year,similartoBel­

gium’s  total  power  consumption. (Still,

China  could  have  chosento banmining

only  in  its  coal­belchingnorth, saysMr

Lee.) Officials may alsohaveworriedabout

collusion between localgovernmentsand

mining  operations,  some of which had

been  getting  subsidiesearmarkedforin­

novative big­data firms.

The central governmentsaiditwanted

to “resolutely preventthetransmissionof

individual­level  riskstobroadersociety”.

That may, in part, havebeena referenceto

the activities of some minesthathadbeen

setting  up  Ponzi­like  schemes,promising

big  returns  to  investors.Otherscammers

have been masqueradingascryptocurren­

cy  traders.  Last  year  over 100 peoplewere

arresting for running twosuchoperations,

PlusToken and WoToken.

To  evade  the  clampdown,bigminers

have sent their machinesoverseas.MrSu,

who  also  runs  a  logistics businessthat

transports  mining  machines, has been

chartering Boeing 747stogetusedonesout

swiftly.  Most  are  going to Russia and

Kazakhstan,  which  together account for

about  13%  of  the  world’sbitcoinmining.

But there are few datacentresabroadwith

space for lots of new machines,including

in  America,  the  second­biggest miner.

Building  a  farm  therecostsbetweenfive

and  ten  times  what  itdoesinChina,says

Mr Su. That is too muchformostChinese

miners. More than halfoftheircomputers

will stay put for now, hesays.

Some  smaller  minersarestillfinding

ways  to  operate.  Onesaysheisluckyto

have  teamed  up  withaprivatelyowned

hydropower station thatislothtoforgothe

extra  revenue  (it  risksbeingfinedbythe

grid  or  booted  off  it).  Whilemeetingyour

correspondent,  he  struckadealtobuya

farm  from  a  fellow  minerfor 5m yuan

($770,000),  powered  bya plantthatisoff

the grid. If his machinescanfunctionthere

for 15 days, he will haveearnedhisinvest­

ment back in bitcoin. 

In an abandoned schoolinsouthernSi­

chuan, Mr Su has stored10,000machines

from some of his shutteredfarms.Forev­

ery  day  they  spend  there,unpluggedand

stacked to the ceiling, hesaysthat1myuan

in potential profit is lost.n

Partyhistory

De-Maoification

P

ropagandistshadteeditupas one of

this year’s blockbusters. The film “1921”,

named  after  the  year  China’s  Communist

Party  was  born,  was  intended  to  grip  the

imaginations of young people with the sto­

ry of the party’s founding 100 years ago this

month.  Mao  Zedong  would  be  played  by

different  actors  depending  on  his  age  in

the scene depicted. One of them would be

Yan  Xujia,  a  19­year­old  pop  star  who  fre­

quently  appears  on  reality  television.  In

mid­May the heartthrob’s profile appeared

on promotional posters against an orange­

yellow  background,  suggesting  the  dawn

of Chinese communism (see picture).

But  a  few  months  before  the  film’s  re­

lease on July 1st, reports appeared on enter­

tainment news sites that Mr Yan had cheat­

ed on a girlfriend. He denied this, but dis­

believing  internet  users  said  he  was  unfit

to  play  a  character  as  important  and  up­

standing as Mao. Some directed their ire at

the  main  producer  of  “1921”:  Tencent  Pic­

tures, a production house owned by a pri­

vately run social­media and gaming giant.

They  accused  it  of  involvement  in  a  capi­

talist conspiracy to smear the party’s most

revered  founder.  “Mao  must  be  portrayed

as  great  and  glorious.  He  must  not  be  be­

smirched,” read one popular comment. 

These posts must have stung officials at

the  party’s  Publicity  Department,  which

was  closely  involved  in  making  the  film

(with the help of one of the country’s most

famous  directors,  Huang  Jianxin).  Earlier

this  year  the  law  had  been  amended  to

make  insulting,  slandering  or  infringing

on the memory of national heroes punish­

able by up to three years in jail. Never mind

that  Mao  was  a  zealous  philanderer  while

he  was  married.  (Mao’s  private  physician,

Li  Zhisui,  provided  lurid  details  of  this  in

his  book  “The  Private  Life  of  Chairman

Mao”, which was published in 1994 shortly

before  Mr  Li’s  death.)  No  mention  is  al­

lowed in China of such matters. 

The film has not been a sensation. In its

first  five  days  it  grossed  300m  yuan

($46.3m),  one  third  of  the  amount  earned

in  a  comparable  period  by  “Fast  and  Furi­

ous 9” (or “F9: The Fast Saga” as it is known

in  America)  after  the  Hollywood  action

movie  was  released  in  China  in  May.  And

audiences  noticed  that  Mr  Yan  was  miss­

ing.  In  one  telling  scene,  Mao  is  chased

through  a  forest  by  his  parents,  but  does

not  appear  himself.  Online  articles  about

Mr Yan being cut were deleted by censors.

As the party increasingly turns to celeb­

rities for help with spreading its message,

their private lives are likely to be subjected

to ever greater scrutiny. Yet the stars know

they  have  little  choice  but  to  play  along

with the cultural commissars. At midnight

on  July  1st,  a  message  posted  on  Weibo,

China’s  answer  to  Twitter,  by  state  televi­

sion  said  “We  will  forever  walk  with  the

party! Best wishes to our great party!” Hun­

dreds of popular actors, singers and other

celebrities  quickly  shared  the  post.  Their

fans  followed  suit.  Within  12  hours,  the

message had been forwarded 15m times. 

Without  celebrities’  support,  state  me­

dia  would  struggle  to  strike  such  a  chord.

The  Weibo  account  of  People’s Daily,  the

party’s  main  mouthpiece,  has  about  130m

followers.  That  is  about  the  same  as  the

number who follow Xie Na, an actress and

television  host.  Celebrities’  accounts  on

Weibo  have  more  than  21bn  followers,  al­

most twice as many as in 2017, the platform

says.  The  majority  of  these  fans  are  26  or

younger. And they are widely scattered: al­

most 90% do not live in the biggest cities. 

But the party’s attempts to boost its rat­

ings  among  the  celebrities’  armies  of  ad­

mirers are fraught with difficulty. Officials

might  give  the  limelight  to  one  heart­

throb, such as Mr Yan, only to find that jeal­

ous fans of another idol take umbrage and

try to undermine the reputation of the par­

ty’s chosen one. Mr Yan may have been the

victim  of  such  an  onslaught.  “The  film­

makers  succumbed  to  pressure  from  fans

of  other  actors  who  went  crazy  reporting

and  exaggerating  Yan’s  immorality,”  says

one Chinese film critic. Mao once said that

Marxists  should  not  be  afraidofcriticism

from  any  quarter.  That  ispooradvice  for

China’s entertainment stars.n

H ONG KONG

The party’s celebrity problem

Yan Xujia, briefly the party’s poster boy