The discursive construction of celebrity governance with popular consent: Zheng Shuang’s surrogacy scandal

In this essay, we focus on Zheng Shuang's surrogacy scandal to explore the moral and cultural logics of entertainment governance in China. The official media enacted moral discourses related to traditional cultural values and women's right to frame the regulatory measures, which resonated with people's sense of morality, emotions, and expectations about entertainment celebrities. Given the fact that the official discourses about the scandal gained popular support, we argue that banning celebrities with 'lapsed morals', rather than a regulatory move imposed from top-down, was constructed out of the consensus between the official and public discourses.