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Tag: People's Liberation Army

  • Joke costs Chinese comedian $2 million for angering officials with military joke

    Joke costs Chinese comedian $2 million for angering officials with military joke

    An entertainment company has paid more than $2 million in fines as a result of a joke made by a Chinese stand-up comedian that made a loose allusion to a term used to describe the nation’s military.

    The expensive penalty emphasises the fine balance comedians must walk in tightly controlled China, where politics is rarely amusing, and the serious repercussions for anyone in the entertainment business who are perceived to cross the line.

    After utilising a word connected to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) during his comedy presentation at the Century Theatre in Beijing over the weekend, Li Haoshi, better known by his stage name House, attracted the attention of authorities this week.

    As the official backlash grew, Li canceled all his performances while the entertainment company that represents him, Shanghai Xiaoguo Culture Media, issued an apology.

    On Wednesday the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism said a subsidiary of the firm would be fined $1.91 million and deprived of $189,000 it made in “illegal gains” – an apparent reference to Li’s two live gigs last weekend. The company was also indefinitely suspended from holding any performances in the capital.

    The statement accused Li of “seriously insulting” the military and “causing bad social impact.”

    Li will be subject to further investigation alongside his agent and other relevant staff, the bureau added.

    The culture authority has not elaborated on details of the investigation but in 2021 China enacted a law to ban any insult and slander on military personnel.

    To international audiences Li’s joke might appear innocuous.

    During the show, he began a skit about how he had adopted two stray dogs since moving to Shanghai.

    He went on to say that their chase after a squirrel one day reminded him of eight words, before he unleashed the controversial punchline, according to audio posted to Chinese social media site Weibo.

    “Fine style of work, capable of winning battles,” he said, flipping a well known Chinese Communist Party slogan referring to the PLA.

    The phrase was first uttered in 2013 by Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who also chairs the military, when he set out a list of qualities he commanded from the nation’s army. It has since been repeated at various official occasions and in state media.

    Shanghai Xiaoguo Culture Media is one of the biggest stand-up comedy show producers in the country.

    In handing down its penalty in a statement on Wednesday, authorities in Beijing concluded that Li’s Saturday show contained “a plot amounting to a serious insult to the People’s Liberation Army and causing a bad social influence.”

    “We will never allow any company or individual to wantonly slander the glorious image of the People’s Liberation Army on a stage in the [Chinese] capital, never allow the people’s deep feelings for the soldiers to be hurt, and never allow serious subjects to be turned into an entertainment,” the culture authority said.

    Li had already apologized on Chinese social media platform Weibo, where he has 136,000 followers.

    “I will take all the responsibility and call off all my performances to deeply reflect and reeducate myself,” he wrote on Monday.

    Shanghai Xiaoguo Culture Media previously said it had suspended the comedian from all productions indefinitely.

    Stand-up comedy has gained traction in China in recent years against the backdrop of an emerging trend of televised contests that pit witty comedians against one another.

    After the penalties were announced, some Chinese internet users took to the Twitter-like Weibo platform to praise the official body’s decision.

    “Well-deserved. Stand-up comedy is a low form of art that thinks it is cultural,” one user wrote.

    But others feared it may lead to a further crackdown on comedy.

    China imposes stringent censorship on issues it deems sensitive – from women’s cleavage to criticism of the Communist Party. That ideological control has tightened under Xi’s rule, widely impacting the entertainment industry.

  • Chinese fighter jet unexpectedly engages US Navy plane

    Chinese fighter jet unexpectedly engages US Navy plane

    The contentious Paracel Islands are a group of roughly 130 small atolls, the largest of which is home to Chinese military sites. The US Navy reconnaissance plane is flying at 21,500 feet over the South China Sea, 30 miles away.

    A CNN crew, granted privileged access to the US flight, is listening in on the radio of the US Navy P-8 Poseidon when a voice announces that it is coming from a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) airfield.

    “American planes.
    China has a 12 nautical mile airspace.
    Stop approaching or you’re responsible for everything, it warns.

    In a few minutes, a Chinese fighter jet armed with air-to-air missiles intercepts the US plane, nestling in just 500 feet off its port side.

    The Chinese fighter jet was so close, the CNN crew could see the pilots turning their heads to look at them – and could make out the red star on the tail fins and the missiles it was armed with.

    Lt. Nikki Slaughter, the pilot of the American plane, hails the twin-seat, twin-engine PLA aircraft.

    “PLA fighter aircraft, this is US Navy P-8A … I have you off my left wing and I intend to proceed to the west. I request that you do the same, over.”

    There’s no reply from the Chinese fighter jet, which escorted the US plane for 15 minutes before turning away.

    To a CNN crew aboard the American jet, it’s stark evidence of the tensions brewing in the South China Sea, and between the US and China.

    The commander of this US Navy mission has a different take.

    “I’d say its another Friday afternoon in the South China Sea,” Navy Cmdr. Marc Hines tells the CNN crew.

    Over the past several years, the South China Sea has emerged as a major potential flashpoint in the Asia Pacific. Islands in it, like the Paracels near which the US Navy plane was intercepted Friday, are the subject of overlapping territorial claims in part from China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.

    Not only does the strategic waterway hold vast resources of fish, oil and gas, but about a third of global shipping passes through it – worth about $3.4 trillion in 2016, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ (CSIS) China Power Project.

    China claims historic jurisdiction over almost the entirety of the vast sea, and since 2014 has built up tiny reefs and sandbars into artificial islands heavily fortified with missiles, runways and weapons systems – sparking outcry from the other claimants.

    The Paracel Islands, called the Xisha Islands by China, are in the northern part of the South China Sea, east of Da Nang, Vietnam, and south of China’s Hainan Island.

    Named by 16th century Portuguese mapmakers, they have no indigenous population to speak of, only Chinese military garrisons amounting to 1,400 people, according to the CIA Factbook.

    Surrounding them is 12 nautical miles of airspace that China was claiming as its own Friday – a claim Washington doesn’t recognize.

    Far to the southeast sits the Spratly Islands chain, just 186 miles from the Philippine island of Palawan.

    In 2016, in a case brought by the Philippines, an international tribunal in the Hague ruled that China’s claim to historic rights to the bulk of the sea had no legal basis.

    But Beijing has rejected the tribunal’s ruling and continued its military buildup, building bases in the Spratlys, which it calls the Nansha Islands.

    China also conducts regular military exercises in much of the South China Sea and maintains a large presence of coast guard and fishing vessels in the disputed waters – which has frequently stoked tensions with its neighbors.

    On Friday, while flying close to the Philippines, the US Navy P-8 spotted a PLA Navy guided-missile destroyer and descended to around 1,000 feet to get a closer look – bringing more warnings from the PLA.

    “US aircraft. US aircraft. This is Chinese naval warship 173. You are approaching to me at low altitude. State your intention over,” a voice comes over the US plane’s radio.

    PLA warship 173 is the destroyer Changsha, likely armed with dozens of surface-to-air missiles.

    The US plane will keep a safe distance, its pilot, Lt. Slaughter, replies.

    “US aircraft. US aircraft. This is Chinese naval warship 173. You are clearly endangering my safety. You are clearly endangering my safety,” the Chinese ship says.

    “I am a United States military aircraft. I will maintain a safe distance from your unit,” Slaughter replies, and the US mission continues.

    The US Navy says these missions are routine.

    US vessels and aircraft operate regularly where international law allows, the Pentagon says. But China claims the US presence in the South China Sea is what’s fueling the tensions.

    When a US guided-missile cruiser steamed near the Spratly Islands in November, the PLA said such action “seriously infringes on China’s sovereignty and security” and is “hard proof is that the US is seeking maritime hegemony and militarizing the South China Sea.”

    The US Navy said the US cruiser conducted the operation “in accordance with international law and then continued on to conduct normal operations in waters where high seas freedoms apply.”

    For Hines, the US commander of Friday’s mission, the tensions are always less when he’s talking with the Chinese side.

    Silence brings uncertainty, he says.

    “Whenever there’s no response, it leaves questions. Do they understand what were saying? Do they understand our intentions? Do they understand we don’t mean any harm?” he says.

    For the most part Friday, the answers were there. And the encounters were “professional,” Hines says. And he wants to keep it that way.