Yao Yao Jiang: Liu Xiaoqing reported again at 76, embroiled in lawsuits, can she make it through this time?
This episode reviews the complete journey of the famous Chinese actress Liu Xiaoqing, from her early rise to fame, her 422-day detention in 2002 due to a tax case, to her recent resurgence of tax举报, losing an appeal in the second instance, and civil disputes such as claims from a former assistant. It explores her ups and downs in the entertainment industry amidst the backdrop of the times.
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Hello everyone, I am Yaoyaojiang, who loves to think and values logic. Many people know about Liu Xiaoqing being detained for 422 days over tax issues. Back in 2002, she was a household name and a multi-millionaire who had made it onto the Forbes rich list. Now, more than twenty years later, she is 76 years old. In May of last year, a Shenzhen businessman flew specially to Shanghai to report her real-name for tax evasion to the tax bureau. On August 31 of this year, the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court ruled against Liu Xiaoqing in the second instance, ordering her and her company to pay ¥3.3 million in debt. Her former assistant Guke also sued her in the Beijing Chaoyang Court, demanding 5.04 million yuan right off the bat. How is 76-year-old Liu Xiaoqing once again embroiled in lawsuits? Will she enter a detention center once more? To answer this question, we must first understand the 422 days she spent in Qincheng Prison. Before she was arrested, she twice attempted to flee China, but neither attempt succeeded. After walking out of her cell, the procuratorate ultimately decided not to prosecute her. Was she locked up back then because of tax issues or political reasons? It is hard to be a woman, and even harder to be a famous woman. Come on, let us give a round of applause to the peerless Liu Xiaoqing.
On the afternoon of April 27, 2002, a flight took off from Beijing to Shenzhen. Liu Xiaoqing sat in the cabin, intending to take a boat to Hong Kong that evening, and then transfer to France from Hong Kong. More than a decade later, she wrote down her feelings at the time in her autobiography 'My Life Without Fear of Starting Over'. She wrote that when she earned a salary of 50 yuan a month, she did not change; when she went to the United States and France to hold personal photo exhibitions, she did not change; when her autobiography 'My Path' was criticized, she did not change. But now, she was fleeing abroad. She wrote that her motherland did not want her anymore, that they had already treated her as a criminal and turned her into an enemy of the people. Earning a salary of 50 yuan a month was something from many years ago. Liu Xiaoqing was born on October 30, 1950, in Fuling, Sichuan, which is today's Fuling District in Chongqing. When she was young, she studied the yangqin. In 1970, she graduated from the Affiliated Middle School of the Sichuan Conservatory of Music. That year, the Cultural Revolution had entered its fifth year, and a large number of middle school graduates in the cities were sent down to the countryside. Liu Xiaoqing was also assigned to farm in the rural areas. For a city girl who studied music, the best way out of the countryside was an arts propaganda team. She entered a military propaganda team and was later transferred to the drama troupe of the Chengdu Military Region. In that era, sent-youths being able to wear military uniforms was equivalent to leaving the countryside, and entering a military arts troupe was an opportunity only a few people had. In the mid-1970s, the August First Film Studio was shooting the film 'The Great Wall of the South China Sea' and selected her to play a fishing village girl. This was her first time on the big screen. Regarding the reasons for Liu Xiaoqing's transfer to Beijing, there are different accounts. One account says that while filming 'The Great Wall of the South China Sea', a friend introduced her to Wang Li, a pianist with the General Political Department Opera Troupe of the People's Liberation Army, who was based in Beijing. At the time, as long as this marital relationship existed, it could help Liu Xiaoqing transfer her residence registration to Beijing. But Liu Xiaoqing had her own version of the story.
My first marriage, everyone says it was about playing the piano. Back then, Liu Xiaoqing married this pianist from the General Political and Cultural Troupe to come to Beijing. That's not true, I didn't transfer myself, my partner transferred. But because of that marriage, she got transferred, right? The registered residence wasn't either, it's just that back then if I hadn't married, and had someone I was married to in Chengdu—I was in the Zhanqi Drama Troupe, yeah—I definitely wouldn't have come to Beijing. If I hadn't come to Beijing, China wouldn't have seen a generation's best actress, and it wouldn't be because the Beijing Film Studio transferred me.
No matter how she arrived in Beijing, on the fourth day after her wedding, Liu Xiaoqing left Beijing to shoot a film elsewhere, and it was a full year before she returned to Beijing. She truly became famous after the end of the Cultural Revolution. In 1979, she starred in Little Flower and Look at This Family. Little Flower tells the story of a pair of separated siblings searching for each other during the wartime era; the older brother joined the revolutionary army, fought, was injured, and fell behind, only to be rescued by a female guerrilla leader who turned out to be the younger sister sold off by their parents years before. Liu Xiaoqing played He Cuigu. One of the most moving scenes in the film involved crawling on her knees up stone steps, step by step, to carry a stretcher up the mountain. To get these shots right, Liu Xiaoqing knelt and crawled up the stone steps of Mount Huangshan multiple times a day, experiencing firsthand the feeling of sweat-soaked temples and blood-stained knees. That same year, she won the Best Supporting Actress award at the Hundred Flowers Awards for Look at This Family. In 1980, she was officially transferred to the Beijing Film Studio, and in 1982 she divorced Wang Li. At that time, a female celebrity getting a divorce was a major event discussed nationwide, and she later listed a long string of firsts she had achieved in her book, one of which was being the first celebrity to openly divorce. After her divorce, rumors about her grew increasingly numerous, and she decided to write an autobiography to speak for herself, but she did not expect the book to subject her to heavy criticism. This autobiography, titled My Path, was published in 1983. A sentence from the book has been passed down for decades: It is hard to be a person, it is hard to be a woman, it is hard to be a famous woman, and it is even harder to be a single famous woman. For a female actor in her early thirties to openly write about her marriage and grievances was a very scandalous thing in 1983, and after the book came out, it sparked intense controversy. In fact, as early as 1981, she encountered a film that caused her massive trouble. That film was The Savage Land, adapted from Cao Yu's play, in which she played Hua Jinzi, a rural woman who loved and hated fiercely. After the film was completed, it was first screened internally within the film industry. According to her recollection, the reaction from experts and scholars who watched it was extremely intense, with copyright purchased by Hong Kong, the United States, Canada, and Italy, and it even received a recommendation as one of the world's best films at the Venice Film Festival. However, The Savage Land was banned from distribution domestically, later attributed to the campaign against spiritual pollution at the time. In the autumn of 1983, the Chinese Communist Party launched the campaign against spiritual pollution, criticizing so-called bourgeois ideology in literary and artistic works, and this film was suppressed domestically for several years, not being publicly released until 1987.
Although the film was suppressed, Liu Xiaoqing's career did not stall. In 1983, Hong Kong director Li Hanxiang filmed The Burning of the Imperial Palace and The Reign Behind the Curtain, inviting her to play Empress Dowager Cixi. This was an early major co-production between the mainland and Hong Kong. To play Cixi, she had to wear heavy headwear weighing over ten jin while filming, portraying Cixi from her innocent youth to her ruthless middle age, and for a long time thereafter, audiences would think of Liu Xiaoqing whenever Empress Dowager Cixi was mentioned. In 1986, she starred in Hibiscus Town, directed by Xie Jin.
Add some soup.
In the film, she played Hu Yuyin, who sold rice tofu in a small town, living a good life through hard work, only to be labeled as a newly rich peasant during political movements, leading to the ruin of her family.
I have many.
For this role, she won the Best Actress awards at both the China Film Golden Rooster Awards and the Hundred Flowers Awards in 1987. From 1987 to 1989, she won the Hundred Flowers Award for Best Actress for three consecutive years with Hibiscus Town, The Savage Land, and Spring Peach. Jiang Wen, who was over ten years younger than her and played the male lead Qin Shutian in Hibiscus Town, portrayed an intellectual who suffered countless grievances and depended on Hu Yuyin for survival in the story, and off-screen, the two grew close while filming in Hunan. According to insiders from the crew at the time, after filming the scene where the two endured public criticism in the rain, Director Xie Jin gave Jiang Wen a jar of rice wine, and Jiang Wen and Liu Xiaoqing drank together the entire night. By then, everyone in the crew knew that the tragic on-screen couple had also become an item off-screen.
Each needs to be packed separately.
Director Xie Jin later confirmed that the two had indeed been romantically involved. This relationship lasted for about eight years, and after breaking up in 1994, they remained friends. Jiang Wen later became a director himself, creating In the Heat of the Sun. In 2002, when Liu Xiaoqing was arrested, Jiang Wen rushed to her home immediately to comfort her family and spent a large sum of money to hire four famous lawyers to fight her legal case. By the late 1980s, Liu Xiaoqing was already China's most famous female actor, and she believed so herself.
Did you once say that I am China's best actress, do you affirm that? Look at now, then? Who is China's final actress? Telling you, it's me, thank you. Who was the actor shouted last time? Yes, of course it's me, and in the best state, so until today, the female actors in the world.
The next day, front-page headlines in major newspapers read: Liu Xiaoqing says I am China's best actress. Many years later, reflecting on it while in the detention center, she counted this statement among the reasons for her arrest. Liu Xiaoqing was first targeted by tax authorities on March 8, 1989, when the Shinan Branch of the Qingdao Municipal Tax Bureau issued a tax violation handling notice to Liu Xiaoqing, stating that she used concealment methods to evade personal income regulatory tax amounting to 183,620 RMB. The handling decision was to pay the owed tax plus a fine of the same amount, totaling 360,000 RMB. She had lawyers do a tremendous amount of work, and half a year later, on October 4, 1989, the Shinan Branch reissued its ruling, stating that the tax evasion amount had been reduced to 2,907 RMB, fined 1-fold, while parts involving tax omission and failure to declare were also fined separately. Reduced from 180,000 to less than 3,000 RMB, this matter was truly an easy pass for Liu Xiaoqing at the time.
After making a name for herself overnight, Liu Xiaoqing began to focus wholeheartedly on making money. In the early 1990s, Liu Xiaoqing plunged into the business world, getting into real estate, cosmetics, and investing in her own films. Company after company was opened, and in her second autobiography, she wrote that she already owned 26 or even more enterprises. Her fame alone was worth a fortune; according to her own account in the book, in 1993, when Shenzhen held a manuscript auction, the organizers invited her to submit a piece. She did not have a book on hand, so she just offered a title: From Movie Star to Billionaire Bitch, without having written a single word, yet this book title fetched 170,000 yuan at auction. As her business grew larger, she never stopped acting either, starring in the television series Wu Zetian in 1995.
The empress wants to kill me, remember these five moves and one farewell, the empress is the master of the six palaces after all.
Speaking of why she wanted to make money so badly, a friend from the Beijing Film Studio told China News Weekly in 2002 that Liu Xiaoqing had been terrified of poverty and hardship since childhood, and after becoming famous, she began an excessive pursuit of money. In 1999, when the US magazine Forbes compiled its first rich list for mainland China, Liu Xiaoqing ranked 45th, with an estimated fortune between 70 million and 90 million US dollars.
Every major city in China, along with cities like Zhengzheng, has a real estate project, and for these projects, we hope they can all become one of the symbols of the city.
She later self-deprecatingly remarked that she was on the first issue of the Forbes China 100 Rich List, still on the second, but completely gone by the third. During the period when Liu Xiaoqing was making money, a rumor circulated overseas that continues to be reposted repeatedly to this day. The rumor goes like this: Deng Xiaoping was from Sichuan, and Liu Xiaoqing was also from Sichuan; she was a frequent guest in the Deng family's living room and was deeply liked by the Deng family. In 1989, when Jiang Zemin had just been transferred from Shanghai to Beijing as General Secretary, he was very reserved in the Deng family and polite to everyone.
Balance is, well, calling Liu Xiaoqing little sister, but Liu Xiaoqing refused to take the bait and called him Uncle Jiang back. Some even said she joked with Jiang Zemin in front of a crowd, saying you have never served a single day in the military, yet I have even held a gun. The end of the story is that Jiang Zemin held a grudge over this, and Liu Xiaoqing's later downfall was his revenge. The earliest traceable source is a short article in the overseas People's Daily in 2003, where the author relayed information from a princeling who frequently visited the Deng family, and it was later cited by a book titled The Man Jiang Zemin. The narrator has never come forward, and neither Liu Xiaoqing nor the Deng family has ever confirmed it. The earliest verifiable statement she made herself about Deng Xiaoping was in a 2007 interview, where she said that she, like Deng Xiaoping, had experienced great ups and downs. Linked to this legend is also a piece of footage: in 2018, a Voice of America reporter posted a video on Twitter saying he visited the Deng family cemetery and found it right next to Liu Xiaoqing's family graveyard. The tombstones were engraved with beloved mother Liu Huihua and beloved father Ran Changru, with the inscription erected by Liu Xiaoqing and her younger sister Ran Yihong on December 24, 2001. According to Hong Kong media reports, Ran Changru was her stepfather, who back then was an underground CCP member in eastern Sichuan. However, this video did not clarify where the destination actually was, and the truth of it remains to be seen. What is certain is that by the spring of 2002, a storm was already heading her way.
On April 24, 2002, Liu Xiaoqing's brother-in-law, Jing Jun, general manager of Beijing Culture and Art Co., Ltd., was taken away by the police. In fact, the investigation into her companies had begun at the start of April that year. On April 2, 2002, the First Inspection Branch of the Beijing Municipal Local Taxation Bureau filed a case to investigate three companies under Liu Xiaoqing's name: Beijing Xiaoke Culture and Art Co., Ltd., Beijing Industrial Development Company, and Beijing Xiaoke Classic Advertising Company. On April 4, the case was transferred to the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, and the public security bureau launched a formal investigation the next day. On April 24, Liu Xiaoqing's company general manager Jing Jun and former company accountant Fang Li were criminally detained.
After the incident involving Jun, Liu Xiaoqing's first thought was to leave. She held a French residency permit but never obtained French citizenship. In her autobiography, she wrote that had she been a French citizen, she would not have needed to run, nor would she have become the principal suspect in a major criminal case. Her original plan was to go abroad first to protect herself, and then slowly negotiate with the relevant departments. She calculated carefully that departing from Beijing would be too conspicuous, so she chose to leave via Shenzhen. She described those days as a panicked flight like a stray dog, and her greatest fear was that she wouldn't even be able to save her life. The book states that she tried to run away twice, once in Wuhan and once to Hong Kong, neither of which succeeded. The attempt to go to Hong Kong was on April 27, when she flew to Shenzhen. That day, she and her boyfriend Ah Feng flew from Beijing to Shenzhen. She fell asleep on the plane and dreamed that she had arrived in France, that Jingjun had arrived, and that her younger sister Xiaohong had arrived as well, but Ah Feng was nowhere to be seen. When she woke up, Ah Feng was still sitting beside her, his face covered in tears. Just outside the Shenzhen airport, some friends were waiting to welcome them, and together they went to the Shenzhen pier, from where they took a boat to Hong Kong, which allegedly took only forty minutes. The pier manager recognized her at a glance, and the entire pier was in a commotion. The manager invited her party into the VIP lounge, promised to handle the formalities, have their luggage put on the boat, and come back to fetch them before departure. Unexpectedly, however, Liu Xiaoqing was already being targeted. Believing she only had to wait another twenty minutes to rush toward freedom, Liu Xiaoqing sat in the VIP lounge drinking tea and chatting with friends, glancing at her watch from time to time as her heartbeat grew faster. By 7:00 PM, when it was time to board the boat, no one came to call her. Half an hour later, the people in the VIP lounge left one by one, and the conversation between her and her friends dwindled. By 9:00 PM, a friend went out to take a look and returned to say that the boat had already left and her suitcase had been brought back and placed in the lobby. She wrote that at that moment, only she and Ah Feng were left, and in their hearts they knew she could not get out. She thought that losing her head was no bigger than a scar the size of a bowl, and instead felt a wave of relief. Much later, staff members came in to confiscate the identity cards of all her friends, told everyone to stay put and not go outside, and then delivered a bunch of boxed meals. After finishing the meal, the manager finally came in and said as soon as he entered, "Ms. Liu, I'm sorry, you cannot leave the customs." A friend asked why. The manager replied, "We don't know either. When we asked the Beijing side, their reply was that Ms. Liu knows it herself." Her documents were returned, and her suitcase was loaded onto a car. She wrote in the book, "Our meticulously planned escape plan thus completely failed." The official account of this night's events was not published until eight months later. On December 27, 2002, the Shenzhen Entry-Exit Border Inspection General Station disclosed to the public that at around 19:30 on April 27, Liu Xiaoqing and her boyfriend arrived at the Shenzhen Airport Pier, preparing to take the last high-speed ferry of the day at 19:45 to Hong Kong, holding a five-year valid passport and French residency permit issued by the Beijing Public Security Bureau in 1998. The border inspection station had been notified in advance, and she was detained the moment she arrived at the pier. When it was announced that departure was prohibited, her boyfriend became emotional and made a big fuss, but Liu Xiaoqing remained very calm and did not say much more. Returning to Beijing from Shenzhen, she understood that she could no longer leave. She wrote in the book, "After the failed escape attempts in Wuhan and Hong Kong, I completely gave up struggling." In the following days, she was followed 24 hours a day. She had Ah Feng drive the car at high speed, and the eight cars following behind could not brake in time. The followers even gave Ah Feng a thumbs-up, saying, "Brother Feng, your driving skills are too good." She said that the relationship between her and these people was like the Italian film Police and Thief, possessing a very special dynamic. Later on, she simply walked over before going out and directly told the people following them the address she was heading to. That period coincided with the World Cup, with live broadcasts at night. The followers who wanted to watch the matches would come and negotiate with her whether they could return a little earlier, and she always nodded in agreement, as if she were still the boss. She self-mockingly wrote in the book, "Aren't I just a criminal, yet I am the chief culprit." During the days she was being followed, she was not idle either. According to her lawyer at the time, in the few days before her arrest, she spent all day immersed at the company, sitting next to the editor to edit the TV series Luo Shen that she had invested in, hoping the police would arrest her two months later so she could finish editing the film, sell it, and use the money to pay back taxes. The lawyer reminded her that if she felt the assessed amount was too high, she could apply for a review, to which she replied that whatever amount they stated, she would accept it all as long as they could release people. However, Liu Xiaoqing did not wait for those two months. Around 10:00 AM on June 20, police personnel came to her home in Rose Garden, Beijing. "My sister and I both crawled onto the floor of this procuratorate vehicle and even got carsick. The two of us hadn't ridden together like that for a long time... What about her? She was in there too." Our whole family went in, and she was in there as well. "Of course, it seemed the paperwork that day was handled very slowly." From 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM, the police personnel stayed in her home. At noon, she had a boxed meal with her lawyer and the police personnel, and at 3:00 PM she was taken away. Watching her retreating figure, the nanny who was present cried. The outside world said she was locked up in Qincheng Prison, where Jiang Qing and many fallen high-ranking officials had been detained, and which is China's most famous prison. In fact, she was held in the Beijing No. 1 Detention Center, separated from Qincheng Prison by just a wall, located near Xiaotangshan, Changping. Because it was very close, everyone also called it "Qi Cheng" [a homophone/pun], and she herself referred to it as such in her book. The detention cell was very small, holding five people, and her cellmates included suspects involved in serious crimes such as robbery. On August 4, the Second Branch of the Beijing Municipal People's Procuratorate approved the arrest of Liu Xiaoqing. The official press release stated that through investigations by public security and tax authorities, it was confirmed that Liu Xiaoqing, as the legal representative of the company, was personally suspected of tax evasion crimes.
Before her, her younger sister Liu Xiaohong had already been detained on June 18, and the whole family was locked up, leaving only her 19-year-old nephew alone in Australia. There were many rumors on the outside about her time inside; some said her hair turned completely white overnight, while others claimed she asked the guards for permission to dye her hair because of image concerns, but was denied. On the 30th, the Beijing police made a special public statement denying that she was able to take showers or receive special treatment in the detention center, stating that she was held in the same cell as suspects from other cases and subjected to the same management. Her lawyer Yao Yanqian later told China Central Television reporters that Liu Xiaoqing spent most of her time inside reading books, and that this tax case was the biggest blow she ever suffered in her life. The lawyer also said that Liu Xiaoqing deeply regretted her and her company's tax evasion, and was very eager to pay back the taxes owed to the state as soon as possible. These were the accounts heard from the outside while she was still locked up, but more than a decade later, she wrote a different story in her book. After being taken away, she suffered a breakdown once during an interrogation; she suddenly burst into tears, shouting while crying, "All of that is money I earned myself, and every single cent is clean. With so many accountants, I could barely say three sentences to each accountant on average in a year, how could I possibly instruct them to evade taxes? Tax evasion takes skill; do you think my math is that good?" She said her company had been rated as a taxation model enterprise in Chaoyang District for several consecutive years, and that she even went to pay national taxes herself, but no one would accept it, asking why they had to kill the chicken to scare the monkey, and finally crying that it was a miscarriage of justice. Halfway through her crying, she looked up and saw an investigator sitting with crossed legs and a gloating expression looking at her; she immediately stopped crying, wiped her tears with her sleeve, straightened her hair, and calmed down. After being locked up for many days, a lawyer named Liu Shaoxiong finally came to see her, accompanied throughout by members of the special investigation team. The lawyer said he had been to Qincheng Prison twice in total, once to see Jiang Qing, and this time to see her. The lawyer instructed her to seek truth from facts during interrogations, to say she didn't know if she didn't know, and to look carefully at the transcript before pressing her fingerprint. But before that, she had already told the special investigation team everything she should and shouldn't have said. During those days in her cell, she repeatedly asked herself why there was no lawyer, why she was locked up and interrogated before anything was clear, and why her whole family was locked up. In her book, she compared it to Hong Kong, saying that suspects in Hong Kong could be released on bail a few hours after being brought to court. She also cited the British Bail Act 1976 and quoted Italian jurist Cesare Beccaria, stating that a person cannot be called a criminal before a judge's verdict. She also said that the day after Jing Jun was arrested, she personally went to the relevant departments to make up for tax arrears and fines, and was willing to use all her real estate in China as collateral, but the other party did not accept it. She then asked, what kind of logic is it to arrest people and treat them as guilty before there is any evidence? Is it to create a sensation at home and abroad? Finally, she asked herself, why was I the one who got arrested? She gave herself three answers in the book. The first answer was that the state needed a typical example. She wrote that at the time, the tax-paying awareness of Chinese companies was very poor, and in order to popularize tax law, an example was needed to alert the public; she was a star and had been on the Forbes rich list, so she had high fame. She said even she herself felt she was quite suitable. There is a sentence in her book: the special investigation team said they were going to arrest a hundred stars, and I was the first. The second answer was that someone reported her; she said three people jointly wrote a real-name whistleblower letter to the State Administration of Taxation, two of whom were senior executives who had resigned from her company and whom she had cultivated single-handedly, but later, due to business disputes, the company sued these two people in court in her name. To this day, the identities of these three people remain based solely on her side of the story. The third answer was herself; she said her biggest mistake was being too arrogant, having too low emotional intelligence, having very bad relations with the media, publicly criticizing directors and peers, and having a reputation so bad that she was like a street rat chased by everyone. She heard that almost all votes were in favor at the meeting discussing whether to arrest her. The first answer in her book can find corroboration in official reports of that year. In August 2002, China Newsweek wrote that judging from media reports, State Council Premier Zhu Rongji's instruction on the case was to act in accordance with the law. The report said the Premier's instruction had tremendous effectiveness on law enforcement agencies, and this case would not be suspended due to human factors, but would only be investigated deeper and deeper. The same report also dug up the tax document from Qingdao in 1989, writing that although the final determined tax evasion amount was less than 3,000, the fact that Liu Xiaoqing had engaged in tax evasion could no longer be changed. In late May 2002, the State Administration of Taxation issued an emergency notice to the national tax system, demanding localities to audit Liu Xiaoqing's commercial activity income and tax payment status across the country. A deputy director of the Shaanxi Provincial Local Taxation Bureau said that there were only two times when national taxation agencies targeted individuals in the entertainment industry for auditing; the previous time was Mao Amin, and this time was Liu Xiaoqing. Another insider, known as an absolute authority, revealed that investigating Liu Xiaoqing was just the beginning, and that 7 star companies had already been put on the blacklist pending investigation, saying that arresting Liu Xiaoqing was like killing the chicken and the effect came very quickly. By July 15, 3,200 representative offices of foreign enterprises in Beijing had made up for more than 60 million yuan in personal income taxes through self-inspection, and stars in various places successively and publicly made up their taxes. A long report by Xinhua News Agency stated that Liu Xiaoqing was merely bearing the brunt. There was another trigger for this storm: a comparison between the 2001 Forbes China Rich List and the private enterprise tax-paying top 100 published by the official China Taxation magazine showed that only 4 out of the top 50 taxpayers were on the rich list. Media reports stated that Zhu Rongji was very dissatisfied with rich people not paying taxes.
A report in China Newsweek once crunched the numbers: 80% of the 10 trillion yuan in household deposits in Chinese banks belonged to less than 20% of the population, yet this 20% paid less than 10% of the total personal income tax. When the wind changed, the wealthy were the first to panic; their immediate reaction was whether the big stick was about to be used against private enterprises again. A private business owner in Shanghai said he did not oppose paying taxes according to the law, but he did not want to see a directive turn into a campaign. However, the director of the Beijing Local Taxation Bureau stated publicly that Liu Xiaoqing was not being targeted because she was a celebrity. On December 19, 2002, tax authorities announced the investigation results, determining that starting in 1996, Liu Xiaoqing and her two companies had evaded 14.58 million yuan in taxes through means such as failing to record income, underreporting income, overreporting expenses, and refusing to declare taxes after being notified. With an additional 5.734 million yuan in late fees, the total came to 20.317 million yuan. Once the figures were released, rumors spread even more wildly; some said she might be sentenced to life imprisonment or even the death penalty. Defending her were several lawyers hired by Jiang Wen: Lie Yang, Li Xiaolin, Zhang Qingsong, and Xu Lanting. Lanting published an article in the Legal Daily stating that talk of a life sentence or the death penalty was pure nonsense. He said that if it were only a charge of tax evasion, the maximum sentence would be seven years. He asked a question: for someone like Liu Xiaoqing, who could not possibly evade trial if her passport were simply confiscated, why was it necessary to detain her? He wrote in the article that in China, as long as a person is suspected of a crime, they are kept in long-term detention before the verdict; detention is the rule, and bail is the exception. Bail pending trial often becomes an extravagant hope, or even a form of power-for-money trading. He also said that being detained for too long before a verdict often leads to the final sentence matching the time already served, meaning the court sentences the person to the exact amount of time they have already spent inside, just to justify the prior detention. The deputy chief prosecutor of the Chaoyang District People's Procuratorate in Beijing, who was responsible for the public prosecution, also gave an exclusive interview on CCTV's Oriental Horizon. He said that for tax evasion alone, the maximum would be seven years. The host asked him if they would consider historical factors, given that Liu Xiaoqing's tax case spanned six years. Ruan Qilin's answer was very candid; he said that at the time, citizens' awareness of tax payment was not strong, and people might have paid less tax, making tax evasion a relatively common situation, and even tax officials knew about it but did not intervene. He added that one cannot say that because everyone had a relaxed attitude six years ago, handling it strictly today is wrong. These words came from the prosecution, stating that prosecuting her was intended to awaken citizens' tax awareness through this case, but they did not advocate relying solely on punishing one person to achieve this. Ruan Qilin gave this interview at the end of December 2002, by which time Liu Xiaoqing's properties were already waiting to be auctioned. The starting price for the properties in Beijing was lowered repeatedly, eventually reaching only about 2,000 yuan per square meter, and properties in Chongqing and Shenzhen were also put up for sale. On January 2, 2003, the Chaoyang District Procuratorate formally accepted the case. Three days later, on the morning of January 5 at 9:30, 19 properties under the names of Liu Xiaoqing and her company were publicly auctioned in Beijing. There was a small incident at the auction where someone at the door asked why they were not allowed in. In two hours, 18 properties were sold for a total of 66.16 million yuan, while the property in Shenzhen failed to sell. At that time, the court had not yet opened the trial, and she had not been convicted. When the media asked why the properties were auctioned before the person was tried, Ruan Qilin's explanation was that the auction was a tax collection action by the tax authorities in accordance with tax law, and that tax collection and criminal liability were two different matters. She learned about the auction of her properties while in the detention center. More than a month later, the case took a turn. On February 17, 2003, the day the review period expired, the Chaoyang District Procuratorate returned the case to the public security organs for supplementary investigation on the grounds of insufficient evidence for conviction. Lawyers who had handled the Mu Wanxin, Ma Xiangdong, and Yuanhua cases in the United States also joined her defense team. Half a year later, on August 15, 2003, Liu Xiaoqing was granted bail pending trial. The next day, she walked out of the detention center with her sister, Liu Xiaohong. Counting from June 20, 2002, she had been detained for a total of 422 days. Reports at the time said the reason for granting bail was her expression of remorse and her desire to raise funds to pay the taxes, though some law professors speculated that the bail might be related to insufficient evidence. She took 2 million yuan from the company's accounts to pay the taxes and used her personal properties as collateral. After getting out, she worked on filming while paying off the debt. On December 12, 2003, the company's tax evasion case went to trial. In January 2004, reports stated that the taxes had been paid off, with only 3 million yuan in late fees remaining. Some said she had hidden money overseas, which she denied, saying that not paying back money when she had it was not her character. On April 6, 2004, the Beijing Chaoyang District People's Court delivered its first-instance verdict: Beijing Xiaoqing Culture and Art Co., Ltd. was guilty of tax evasion and fined 7.1 million yuan, and the company's general manager, Jing Jun, was found guilty of tax evasion and sentenced to three years in prison. A month later, on May 10 and 11, 2004, the Chaoyang District Procuratorate issued non-prosecution notices to Liu Xiaoqing and Liu Xiaohong, respectively. This was not publicly announced; when reporters called the procuratorate to verify, the answer received was "no comment." A report contained a sentence stating that because Liu Xiaoqing had an agreement with the procuratorate, both sides would not disclose the matter. The company was convicted, her brother-in-law went to prison, but Liu Xiaoqing herself was not prosecuted and was not convicted. Her own statement has remained unchanged; in 2021, she responded to netizens on Weibo, saying, "The most important thing is that I personally did not evade taxes, nor did I ever instruct anyone to do so." The most widely circulated version overseas is that it was retaliation by Jiang Zemin, claiming that Jiang Zemin held a grudge after being contradicted by her at the Deng family's residence.
After Deng Xiaoping passed away in 1997, Jiang Zemin had no more misgivings and continued until the National People's Congress meeting in 2003, when Jiang Zemin handed over the post of President, and the procuratorate finally dared to return the case on the grounds of insufficient evidence. Aligning this statement with the timeline of Jiang Zemin handing over power: on June 20, 2002, Liu Xiaoqing was seized, and on July 24, her formal arrest was approved while Jiang Zemin was still General Secretary of the CCP Central Committee. In November 2002, the 16th National Congress of the CCP was held, Hu Jintao succeeded as General Secretary, and Jiang Zemin handed over the highest party post. After Jiang Zemin handed over the post of General Secretary, the case did not ease up; on December 19, tax authorities announced a tax evasion determination of over 14 million yuan. On January 5 of the following year, Liu Xiaoqing's 19 properties were auctioned off. The turning point came on February 17, 2003, when the procuratorate returned the case for supplementary investigation on the grounds of sufficient conviction evidence. In March 2003, Jiang Zemin handed over the presidency, and in August, Liu Xiaoqing was released on bail. There is another timestamp: when the procuratorate decided not to prosecute her in May 2004, Jiang Zemin was still Chairman of the Central Military Commission, a post he would not relinquish until September 2004. Therefore, chronologically, she stepped out of trouble step by step during the process of Jiang Zemin transferring power, which matches reports from overseas. However, after Jiang Zemin handed over the post of General Secretary, tax collection and auctions actually accelerated. The timeline alone neither proves nor refutes this claim. Another verifiable fact is that in the reports of that year, the only national leader by name who gave instructions on this case was Zhu Rongji, whose instruction was to act in accordance with the law. The three answers Liu Xiaoqing herself gave in her book were making an example of someone, being reported by someone, and her own arrogance, without a single word mentioning Jiang Zemin. However, she did not speak definitively; at a 2015 book launch, she made this remark: "The people who got me into Qincheng Prison, I can have tea with them, I understand them." She did not specify who "they" were. When she walked out of the detention center in August 2003, Liu Xiaoqing was 52 years old. Her house had been auctioned, her company paralyzed, and she was still burdened with tens of millions in debt, yet her physical health was actually better than before she went in. In the detention center, she ran 8,000 steps every day in her tiny cell, ate corn porridge, and studied English on her own. When she came out and had a check-up, her chronic stomach ailment was basically cured, and she wrote half-jokingly in her book that being locked up in Qincheng had so many advantages. Returning to her acting profession and starting over from scratch, she filmed one production after another at the Hengdian World Studios, with some calling her the "First of Hengdian." On October 29, 2003, just over two months after coming out, she took on her first post-prison drama, Young Heroes of the Yongle Era. The trouble did not end; in April 2004, a peasant came to Beijing to accuse her of owing 3.3 million yuan in wages. She wrote once in her book about a long conversation with a judge. At that time, she was indignant about a lawsuit she believed was brought by someone impersonating a peasant. The judge advised her to accept the fact that the court had already ruled on, saying, "Anything that can be solved with money is not a problem." Lawsuits aside, she never stopped acting. From 2005 to 2008, she performed in the stage play The Last Night of Madame Jin in the mainland and Taiwan. Starting in 2012, she performed in the stage play The Peerless Beauty for over a hundred performances. In television dramas, she played empresses, dowager empresses, and Wu Zetian time and again. In 2015, she published her third autobiography, Life Is Not Afraid to Start Over, focusing specifically on this tax case and those 422 days. The back cover of the book printed a few words from her: "The memories were extremely painful, almost costing me half my life, and I do not regret it." Her ex-husband Chen Guojun also came to the book launch. Back then, after the two divorced, Chen Guojun published a book writing about the privacy in their marriage; this time, he apologized to her publicly, using the words...
There is a wish in this world that is very
To hold his hand and tell him
You are the most important
And only person in my life
That I have loved with all my heart and soul. She once said that she published her book just for the money.
Even at over 70 years old, she is still filming short dramas and playing young women. However, lawsuits have come knocking again in the last two years. In May 2025, Mr. Wang from Shenzhen flew to Shanghai specifically to report Liu Xiaoqing to the Fourth Inspection Bureau of the Shanghai Municipal Tax Service for tax evasion. He claimed that Liu Xiaoqing transferred a sum of 3.3 million yuan into her Shanghai Yixi Culture Media Center under the guise of an image endorsement fee, and then used a 6% VAT invoice to account for it, thereby paying less tax. He also alleged that this studio had no office space and no employees. Liu Xiaoqing issued a statement saying she did not know this person and that this was a malicious report. A month later, on August 8, 2025, the Fourth Inspection Bureau of the Shanghai Municipal Tax Service issued a notice stating that after investigation, no tax-related issues reflected in the report were found. This 3.3 million yuan was exactly the money Mr. Wang lent to Liu Xiaoqing Jewelry Ningbo Co., Ltd. in 2020. It was never repaid upon maturity, and the court ordered the company to pay it back, but neither the company nor its legal representative had any assets that could be enforced. Liu Xiaoqing was once a shareholder of this company, having subscribed to 3.4 million yuan in capital, but she did not pay a single cent. In April 2021, she transferred the shares for 0 yuan, so Mr. Wang applied to add her as a person subject to enforcement. Liu Xiaoqing argued that she had been registered as a shareholder under a stolen identity and that she only had an image endorsement relationship with the company. In November 2025, the Futian District People's Court of Shenzhen did not accept her argument in the first instance. On August 31, 2026, the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court rejected her appeal in the second instance, upholding the original judgment that she must repay this debt on behalf of the company within the scope of the 3.4 million yuan capital contribution that was not actually paid. Another lawsuit was filed by Gu Ke, who had been her photography assistant since 2015. After working with her for six years, he is now suing for 5.04 million yuan on the grounds of a labor contract dispute. On August 4, 2026, during a pre-trial mediation at the Beijing Chaoyang Court, she did not appear in person. Her lawyer said that the two parties only had a normal employment relationship and that wages had long been settled, so the mediation failed. As early as a program in March 2025, she had said, "There is not a single soft bone in my 365 bones, and I won't give a single cent." In this year of being entangled in lawsuits, she was still receiving awards. In March 2026, she received an honor for quality actors in micro-short dramas, and in October, she was named a special committee-recommended role model at a charity gala by ifeng.com. At 76, Liu Xiaoqing will not be entering a detention center because of these three things, at least based on the facts currently made public. The tax authorities have already investigated the tax evasion report, and the conclusion is that there is no problem. The second-instance defeat and the lawsuit with Gu Ke are both civil disputes; losing means paying money, not going to jail. Legally, once tax evasion is verified, criminal responsibility can indeed be pursued, and having the ability to execute but refusing to execute a court's effective judgment may also constitute the crime of refusing to execute a judgment. However, as of today, there are no public reports indicating that her situation has reached this point. In 2002, she was the first of the one hundred celebrities mentioned by the special investigation team. So, who decided to use her as the target? She said she would understand those who targeted her and could even have tea with them, but she has not written down their names to this day. When writing this script, I went through Liu Xiaoqing's life over the past few decades from beginning to end. She said that she, like Deng Xiaoping, had experienced great ups and downs. Deng Xiaoping had three ups and three downs in his life, and the number of ups and downs in her life is no less than his. She came out of the countryside and joined the army's drama troupe, was criticized after becoming famous, became a movie queen and a billionaire, then suddenly ended up in a detention center, started over from scratch in Hengdian after coming out, and is now in lawsuits again at seventy-six. In 1983, she wrote in her first autobiography that it is hard to be a person, hard to be a woman, and even harder to be a famous woman. By the time her third autobiography was published in 2015, the book's introduction said she had come to view this statement as that of a "little woman." But what I see from her is a simpler sentence: in China, it is hard to be a person. Even the red elite can be overthrown overnight. Deng Xiaoping himself was overthrown three times. A big star like Liu Xiaoqing was chosen as a typical example and was locked up in a detention center for 422 days, and her house was auctioned off before she was even convicted. As for ordinary people, if they really encounter such things, they don't even have the chance to write a book to speak for themselves. Well, that's all for today's chat.
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I am Yao Yao Jiang, who loves to think and values logic. See you next time.