After authorities put restrictions on high pays for Chinese actors and actresses, nine of China’s most prominent entertainment companies have now come forward with a proposed boycott on excessive wages for stars in film and tv dramas.
On August 11, nine of China’s biggest entertainment and streaming sites, including iQiyi, Youku, and Tencent video, issued a joint statement on boycotting excessive high wages for actors and actresses.
The statement, titled “Resisting Unreasonable Pays & Rejecting Unhealthy Industry Trends” (‘抑制不合理片酬,抵制行业不正之风’) says that actors and actresses should not get paid more than one million yuan (±US$146,000) per episode and not more than 50 million (±7,3 million US) for an entire drama show or movie.
The relatively high pay of actors and actresses in China, especially in the TV drama industry, has been making headlines for years. Previously, Chinese authorities already sought to rein in high salaries for actors, which can take up a significant percentage of a production’s budget.
In 2016, Beijing Review reported that Chinese stars’ salaries were under fire for being excessively high. At the time, a member of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, Sun Baoshu, stated that since casting takes up such a large part of production funds, producers have to cut budgets for things such as scriptwriting, stage setting, and sound recording. This leads to poorer productions, Sun said, harming the development of China’s entertainment market.
In September of 2017, the China Alliance of Radio, Film, and Television (CARFT), a non-profit organization that works under the government, ordered China’s production agencies to limit the expenses for cast salaries to no more than 40% of the total production costs for online/TV drama series. Within this percentage, the salary of the show’s leading actors reportedly could not exceed 70% of the total salary paid to all actors, arguing that top-earning stars’ high fees are harmful to a ‘healthy development’ of China’s entertainment industry. The same rule was reiterated by the Chinese tax authorities this week.
Today’s statement, for the first time, puts a cap on the fixed amount actors and actresses in the Chinese entertainment can receive per project – not based on percentages of the total budget.
Perhaps not coincidentally, the statement comes at a time when a tax evasion scandal involving China’s highest-paid actress Fan Bingbing is making headlines in China. The actress reportedly received a total payment of 60 million yuan ($9.3 million) for just four days work on the film Cell Phone 2, of which she allegedly only declared 10 million to authorities.
The scandal has attracted a lot of attention on Chinese social media recently, with many bewildered reactions over the exorbitant pays in the entertainment industry.
Posts publishing the boycott statement have gone viral on Weibo this weekend; some received over 58,000 likes per thread, and the hashtag “boycott high pays” (#抵制天价片酬#) was viewed more than 16 million times at time of writing.
The companies signing the statement are:

iQiyi (爱奇艺), also dubbed ‘the Netflix of China’, a leading online entertainment and streaming service.
Youku (优酷), one of the biggest online video companies in China, sometimes referred to as the Chinese YouTube.
Tencent Video (腾讯视频), the hugely popular Chinese video streaming website owned by Tencent.
Daylight Entertainment (正午阳光), one of China’s most respected production companies.
Huace Film & TV Co (华策影视), well-known TV program production and distribution company.
Linmon Pictures (柠萌影业), a Shanghai-based Chinese film & TV producer and distributor.
Ciwen Media Co (慈文传媒), a Beijing-based film and television company.
Youhug Media (耀客传媒),a media and entertainment management company headquartered in Shanghai.
New Classics Media (新丽传媒), a renowned TV content and film producer.
Among the thousands of people responding to the new boycott on Weibo, there are many who find that the maximum pay is still way too high: “A million yuan per episode?! My god!”, many write, with some wondering why actors are making so much more money than doctors and scientists.
Others comment that they think it is funny none of the big actors and actresses on Weibo allegedly have reposted the popular statement.
“I’m supportive of the boycott,” a typical comment read: “These high fees really were an unhealthy tendency.”
Others write: “It’s good! They should have done it years ago.”
By Manya Koetse,
with contributions by Miranda Barnes.
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Kurutoga2k7
August 19, 2018 at 1:25 am
Hey, actually the complaints were more about income tax evasion than extraordinary high income. It is less about jealousy of the rich, more about income that was not reported. That is why it is illegal, not just immoral.