Guo Meimei, WHY?!?!?
I’m sorry, I’m a wreck today. And it’s all because of Guo Meimei. Beautiful tyrant, fiend angelical, dove-feathered raven, wolvish ravening lamb!
Guo Meimei, my one true love. Until she ripped my heart in half.
Guo Meimei and I have a … turbulent love. Possibly because only one of us knows the other exists.
I first heard about this 23-year-old beauty back in 2011. Photos went viral on Chinese social media of her driving Maseratis, living it up in fancy Beijing villas, riding jet skis, and flaunting designer bags and clothes. She was also claiming to be a general manager for an organization affiliated with the state-run Red Cross Society of China.
Of course, working for a charity and a multi-million dollar lifestyle don’t really go together, which is why we don’t see shows about “the real grant writers of LA,” so a lot of people were wondering if Guo was embezzling money from China’s Red Cross.
Then it turned out she made the whole thing up, but she was, maybe, possibly, the girlfriend of an investor for China’s Red Cross, but he was married, and well, people stopped donating to China’s Red Cross. The organization had already been in hot water for previous corruption problems. And during disasters, it’s one of the only places where people can donate money, because it’s run by the government.
So people worry that the money they donate gets embezzled instead of being used to help people. Guo Meimei was a symbol of everything that was wrong with the system.
And the Red Cross still hasn’t recovered. In fact, in wake of the recent earthquake in Yunnan, China’s Red Cross released a statement begging people to, “Please forget her; we need to get operational again.”
How could you ever forget her? But I mean, come on. Almost single-handedly ruining a charitable organization’s reputation? We were all young once, right?
But just last week, this angel appeared in prison orange on CCTV for a Cultural Revolution-esque “confession.”
So what, you may ask, could that innocent face possibly be hiding? Well apparently she was arrested for illegal gambling during the World Cup. I guess her Weibo posts about all the big bets she was making tipped off the police.
In her confession, Guo said, “I was just a little girl at heart.” She also admitted that her highflying lifestyle was the result of being … a professional mistress. And not a cheap one at that. Apparently she never made less than $17,000 per encounter. Which is a totally different thing from when she was accused of making money off sex parties last year and she released a photo of herself holding $800,000 worth of casino chips, implying she didn’t need the money.
Now it seems pretty clear that Guo Meimei is being made an example of. One official, Chen Li of the political and judiciary commission said, “Guo Meimei is a representative for many social problems. … Her sugar daddy, showing off her wealth, charity problems, gambling and prostitution are all very serious social issues. We should really think about those issues reflected by Guo Meimei.”
There’s been a huge increase in the number of televised confessions in China over the last year. Many people hadn’t yet been convicted, or sometimes even charged with a crime, but were already on TV confessing their sins.
One recent example is journalist and press freedom advocate Gao Yu, who expressed “deep remorse” in her confession for leaking state secrets. Human rights groups have been concerned that these types of confessions are forced or made under threat.
Why are they on TV? Well, these confessions are politically useful to the Party. They show people changing their incorrect thoughts and submitting to the authority of the Party, and serve as a warning to others.
In fact, these types of public confessions were a hallmark of the bad old days. And if Guo Meimei is any indication, they are coming back into fashion.
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