A Chinese court formally approved the arrest of pop icon Kris Wu on rape charges on Monday — and Chinese streamers have swiftly responded by deleting the shows in which he appears.
The move comes after Wu was first detained on July 31 on suspicions of rape. The allegations against him first emerged last month after Du Meizhu, 18, accused him on social media of date raping her while she was drunk and doing the same to other young women. He denied the charges at the time.
The Chaoyang District People’s Procuratorate in Beijing stated on its official Weibo that it had approved the arrest “after investigation in accordance with the law.” The official accounts for the Beijing and Chaoyang district police and the Communist Party mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, quickly followed with posts of their own on the news minutes later.
Within hours, shows featuring him prominently disappeared in their entirety online, including high-profile ones from major streamers and content studios Youku, iQiyi, MangoTV and Bilibili, among others.
Among the most popular is iQiyi’s “The Rap of China,” which is considered a show that catapulted the rap genre into mainstream Chinese culture. It ran for four seasons from 2017 until 2020, with the first season building a nationwide fandom for now-well-known rappers PG One, GAI, VaVa, TT and After Journey, among others.
Emotions ran high over the deletion of the first season of “Rap of China.” “No matter how you look at it, this show really was formative for a huge number of young rap listeners,” one commentator said.
Other shows to disappear include the first season of iQiyi’s reality show “Fourtry” — which follows Wu and fellow showbiz stars like Angelababy trying to run a fashion store in Tokyo amid culture clashes.
In the past, celebs who have run into trouble have been edited out of productions after their completion. Unreleased projects from those who have run afoul of the law have historically no hope of seeing the light of day.