Chinese film star Fan Bingbing has broken her silence after reemerging into the public eye after a tax evasion scandal. Fan is China’s highest-paid actress. She’s best known outside of China for playing Blink in X-Men: Days of Future Past. She went missing last year after news surfaced about her tax dealings. The actress, 38, now seems to be trying to put the episode behind her and look at the positives in her future.
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“No one can have smooth sailing throughout the journey,” Fan tells The New York Times. “It may be a trough I encountered in my life or in my work, but this trough is actually a good thing. It has made me calm down and think seriously about what I want to do in my future life.”
Upon returning to public life, Fan announced that she had and her fiance Li Chen had split. Li also vanished from public appearances at the same time Fan did. Fan updated her page of Weibo’, China’s Twitter-like social media platform, to reveal her split with Li.
“In one’s lifetime, there are many goodbyes,” she said. “Thank you for everything you have given me — the support and love — along the way. Thank you for your care and love in the future. We will not be an ‘us’ anymore, but we are still us.”
Last year, Fan was in trouble with the Chinese government over tax evasion charges and may have been banned from acting. She reportedly owed about $125 million in back taxes.
An article in the state-run outlet Securities Daily suggested that she was “under control” and that she would “accept the legal decision,” though the article was quickly taken down.
A Hong Kong tabloid called The Apple Daily previously suggested that Fan was spotted at an immigration office in Los Angeles, reportedly seeking sanctuary at the urging of martial arts film star Jackie Chan. Those reports were not corroborated, but media watchdog sites covering China have noted that the government seemed to have been censoring reports of Fan’s disappearance.
The idea that Fan was in trouble for tax evasion came after Chinese TV presenter Cui Yongyuan revealed images implying that Fan had taken part in a practice called a “yin-yang contract,” where someone signs multiple contracts for the same job and uses the contract with a lower value in their taxes, keeping more of the money as a result.
Cui posted several images on a social media account and said those were copies of different contracts signed by Fan relating to the same job. Fan denies that this is the case and has hired a legal team to refute the claims in court, but the practice itself isn’t uncommon.
In June, China announced that it was launching a full investigation into the country’s film and television industry, specifically with regards to yin-yang contracts. The bureau for taxation wants to put an end to the practice, but they did not initially name Fan in their official statement of intent. The investigations are to be carried out by local taxation offices in the southern province of Jiangsu as well as other offices.
Fan returned to public life in April. She will return to acting in Jessica Chastain’s film 355.
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