Do we like them?

Do we like Xiao Zhan?

Our score: 7 out of 10. Clean on harm and decent in how he handled a mess he didn't start, but the record on his own views is thin.

Xiao Zhan is a Chinese actor and singer who became a household name with the fantasy drama The Untamed. That fame came with a famously intense fandom, and in 2020 that fandom landed him in the middle of one of the biggest online blow-ups in Chinese internet history.

The short version: a fan-fiction story on the site AO3 depicted him with his co-star Wang Yibo. Some of his fans reported it to mainland authorities as pornographic, and AO3 became unavailable on the mainland. Fans of that genre blamed him, and a boycott hashtag was viewed over 1.7 billion times within days, according to Caixin. Brands named in the calls included Olay.

Here's the key bit: Xiao himself wasn't part of the fight. The China Project says he had nothing to do with his fans' behaviour, and that he and his studio repeatedly apologised and urged fans to stop. Budweiser and Olay reportedly ended their endorsements with him, so he copped real fallout for something other people did.

His own apology, in a video released in May 2020, drew tens of millions of views. He apologised for disputes that troubled people without naming AO3, which some AO3 fans said wasn't sincere enough. A film critic told Global Times his agency limits what he can say and had handled the controversy poorly.

On the harm check, we found nothing. There's no statement from him on LGBTQ+ people, women, vaccines or the climate, harmful or otherwise, and no trail of projects with people who push harm. That's an honest gap rather than a clean bill of health, which is why this isn't a 10.

On the legal side, he's the one who went to court. In 2021 the Beijing Internet Court ordered a man who posted defamatory remarks about him on Weibo to pay 200,000 yuan and apologise. That's a case about abuse aimed at him, so it counts for nothing against him.