The high-profile divorce between China’s beloved actor, Wang Baoqiang, and his wife, actress Ma Rong, has taken a new turn as Ma has sued Wang for defamation charges. As if the issue wasn’t already messy enough, Song Zhe, Wang’s agent and alleged lover of Ma, has been sued by his wife for a divorce as well.
Ever since Wang posted his first announcement of the divorce on his Weibo on Sunday, the post has received three million comments. The hashtag #WangBaoqiangDivorce was viewed more than five billion times, which amounts to every person in China searching the story more than four times. It’s hard to remember when any issue — gossip or otherwise — received this much attention in China. As of now, a new hashtag #WangBaoqiangDivorceOnBBCFrontPage is trending on Weibo, receiving more than five million clicks.
So far, the public opinion in China is overwhelmingly on Wang’s side. Wang, affectionately nicknamed 'Baobao,' is a symbolic success story. Born into a farming family in Hebei Province, Wang started out as a construction worker, but rose to stardom in 2004 after starring in the film A World Without Thieves. Also having been cast as the innocent good guy in many comedy shows, Wang is thought of as the good guy to whom bad things should not happen.
Just how astonishingly one-sided public support is right now can be seen from this Weibo poll. The poll asks, “who will win, Wang, Ma, or Song?” Out of more than 340,000 respondents, 97 percent have voted in favor of Wang.
As for Ma, she has sued Wang for defamation of character. Filing the case at a Beijing Chaoyang court, she said that she wants Wang to delete his Weibo post and apologize to her. Ma’s first public remark about the divorce was posted to her Weibo account, in which she wrote “the more one tries to hide, the more one is exposed; good and evil will be revealed in truth, but it’s not time to reveal.” The post has now amassed more than 3.5 million comments, many of which call her a “prostitute” or a “bitch.” Ma also uploaded the court documents, which now has more than 3.5 million comments, also not so favorable for her.
Support for Ma isn’t totally nonexistent. Some have suggested that Wang "must have neglected his wife while focusing on his career." There are also feminists who have pointed out the public’s double standard against women having affairs. They cite a recent celebrity couple’s case, in which "the majority of the public urged the wife to forgive the husband who had an affair for the children’s sake."
China’s state-backed newspaper, the Global Times, argues that the fact that a divorce received this much attention “reflects netizens’ need for an outlet by commenting on his case more than they do on political issues," such as the anniversary of Japan’s defeat in World War II or even the Rio Olympics. Yu Guoming, the deputy director of the School of Journalism and Communication at the Renmin University of China, told the Global Times that “[t]he topic offers the Chinese almost unchecked freedom to discuss and dig into whatever details they are interested, in contrast with sensitive political topics.”
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