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A Chinese actor was fined $1.1 million for appearing in ads promoting candy as a weight loss tool.
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Jing Tian is known in Hollywood for films like ‘Pacific Rim: Uprising’ and ‘Kong: Skull Island’.
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The fine comes amid China’s continued crackdown on celebrities and its entertainment industry.
Chinese actor Jing Tian, who starred in Hollywood films such as “Pacific Rim: Uprising” and “Kong: Skull Island,” has been fined more than $1 million for appearing in an ad campaign targeting a brand of candy. touted as a weight loss product.
According to Bloomberg, she has broken China’s advertising law by appearing in advertisements as a brand ambassador for Guangzhou-based health food company Infinite Free.
In the ads, she said people can stay in shape by taking the company’s fruit and vegetable candy product after every meal, which would help block the body’s absorption of sugar, oil and fat through the outlet.
Bloomberg reported that the product has since been removed from e-commerce sites such as Alibaba’s Taobao and JD.com.
On Saturday, the Guangzhou Market Regulation Bureau fined Jing 7.22 million yuan ($1.1 million) for saying ordinary food cannot be promoted because it has therapeutic effects.
The 33-year-old apologized on the same day in a message on the Chinese Twitter-like Weibo platform.
“I hereby sincerely apologize for the failure to fulfill my obligations to review the contract during the signing process and for the negative impact on consumers who trust the related product,” she wrote. “I will never advertise a product in this category again in the future to prevent this from happening again.”
The incident is the latest in China’s ongoing crackdown on celebrities and its entertainment industry.
Last November, China released a list of 88 celebrities who had been blacklisted for “illegal and unethical” behavior, preventing them from accessing or appearing on live streaming platforms.
In the same month, the country banned celebrities from extravagant demonstrations of wealth on social media, arguing that pop stars should adhere to the country’s “core socialist values.”
Read the original article on Insider
