Compiled RAGANANTHINI VETHASALAM, R. ARAVINTHAN and C. ARUNO
A WEIBO post by Chinese actress Datuk Fan Bingbing celebrating her Best Leading Actress win was suddenly removed, sparking speculation that she remains blacklisted by Chinese authorities, reported Oriental Daily.
On Saturday, Fan, 44, was crowned Best Leading Actress at the Golden Horse Awards for her role in Mother Bhumi, a film by Malaysian director Chong Keat Aun. Just hours later, she wrote that she was happy but slightly stunned over the judges’ decision, which trended on Weibo.
However, her post was taken down by the social media platform without reason.
China Press reported that news about her win could not be found on Weibo or on Baidu, which is the search engine used in China.
This prompted speculation that Fan remains blacklisted by Chinese authorities.
It was earlier reported that the actress had found it difficult to find work locally after she was slapped with a 880mil yuan (RM573mil) fine for tax evasion in 2018, which was now touted as one of China’s “biggest tax evasion penalties in history”.
(The above articles are compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.)
