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This article examines the philanthropy/marketing interface with reference to celebrity philanthropy, focusing on the American YouTube star, MrBeast, and the Chinese government regulation of celebrities and social media influencers. Celebrity nowadays can refer to film and music stars with international broadcast media visibility and to people who create their own fame through social media and appeals to niche markets/audiences (social media influencers). While the United States of America has historically used tax incentives to encourage elite philanthropy as a matter of individual choice, the Chinese government is regulating the cultural industries to promote and direct celebrity and influencer philanthropy towards government‐endorsed development goals. Comparing debates about MrBeast philanthropy with the operation of philanthropy in China highlights different ideas about celebrity/influencer philanthropy and the role it can play in supporting public welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the governance of China's entertainment industries using the concept of "indentured celebrities"—famous people who are obliged to serve as ambassadors for Chinese government advertising and public diplomacy. The article introduces the idea of indentured celebrities in relation to Western sociological understandings of major celebrities as "national power elites," "powerless elites," and cosmopolitan "Big Citizens" who use their mediatized star power to exert unelected, "stateless" political influence. It then examines the expansion since the mid-2000s of regulatory controls over China's entertainment industries. Finally, it explores the "Fan Bingbing tax evasion case," revealing how online public censure, and the associated potential for government action, can coalesce to discipline celebrity behaviors. We conclude that regulatory frameworks and, to a lesser degree, "supervision by public opinion," indenture major celebrities to aid the ruling Chinese Communist Party, while undermining any scope to exert nongovernmental political influence as per Western celebrities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the developing body of Chinese prostitution law, and the nature of its implementation, with reference to mainstream media controversy surrounding the case of a male academic penalized as a buyer of commercial sexual services in late 2004. It argues that the protagonist's highly public 'fall from grace' may owe more to the Chinese media's new capacity to act as part of a disciplinary apparatus that extends beyond the purview of the Party-state--via its claim to promote freedom of information--than the presumed repressive ethos of the Chinese Communist Party. Keywords: China; prostitution debates; governance; media.