HAS #METOO ARRIVED IN CHINA? Several brands have cut ties with top Chinese Canadian singer-actor Kris Wu as controversial claims surrounding his personal life emerged on Chinese social media over the weekend.
Wu is one of the most valuable faces in China, serving as the face of Louis Vuitton, Bulgari, Porsche, Lancôme, L’Oreal, Kans as well as Master Kong Ice Tea, Tuborg Brewery, daily chemical products maker Liby, kitchen appliances manufacturer Vatti, Tencent Video and Tencent’s popular video game King of Glory.
The Shanghai-based beauty brand Kans, owned by C-beauty giant Chicmax, was the first to react and announced Sunday evening that it has terminated Wu’s endorsement contract on Weibo.
Porsche, Master Kong Ice Tea, Vatti and King of Glory deleted all Weibo posts mentioning Wu by Sunday. Louis Vuitton temporarily hid all his posts on Weibo but made them public again shortly. His face still can be seen on Lancôme and Bulgari’s Chinese social media accounts.
Kans announced it has terminated Kris Wu’s endorsement contract on Sunday evening.
Weibo/Screenshot
Wu, a former member of the South Korean boy group EXO, was first accused of infidelity and predatory behavior such as using various methods to lure young girls for sex by his alleged girlfriend Du Meizhu, a 19 years old college student, on July 8.
She shared screenshots of alleged conversations between Wu and underaged girls on Weibo and claimed that she has struggled with mental health, and even had suicidal thoughts due to his infidelity and cyberbullying from his fans.
Du also alleged that Wu used a special WeChat account to contact underage girls, using excuses such as recruiting new artists and casting female leads for music videos to lure girls into playing drinking games. Du said she was just one of his many conquests.
Wu and his team categorically denied all her accusations and said have filed a defamation lawsuit against Du the same day.
However, over the weekend, Du revealed that she didn’t receive a court summons. Instead, Wu’s team reached out to her and proposed to settle the accusations with money. She posted a chat history of her negotiating the details of the settlement plan with Wu’s representative and a copy of the contract that his team offered her to sign, which she claimed to be a trap.
She later shared a video of her receiving two bank transfers totaling 500,000 renminbi from Wu Stacy Yu, and Wu Yi Fan, which appeared to be Kri Wu’s mother’s name and his name in Chinese pinyin spelling.
In an interview with local press published on Sunday, Du said she had returned Wu the hush money in installments and was ready to face legal action. She also claimed that over 30 women who shared similar experiences with Wu had reached out to her. Two of them are minors.
In her latest Weibo post, which gained 5.89 million likes and near 300,000 comments, she said “Mr. Wu, I give you twenty-four hours to prepare for a press conference, to the entire network of the whole society to announce the withdrawal of the Chinese entertainment industry… Issue handwritten apology letters to all the victims and post them on your Weibo account for 72 hours. After that, leave China immediately. You don’t deserve to be in this land.”
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By: Tianwei Zhang
