Beijing has accused the CIA of secretly fuelling the trend for effeminate or "sissy" celebrities in China.
The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (Cass), one of the country's leading research institutions, studied
China's booming entertainment industry and its demand for androgynous, coiffed male celebrities, derided in state media as "
xiao xian rou" which means "little fresh meat".
A Cass report accuses the CIA of beginning its campaign to "brainwash" Asian men in Japan in 1962 with the foundation of the Johnny & Associates talent agency.
It claims the agency's founder, Johnny Kitagawa, was "loyal to the Americans rather than the Japanese" and
colluded with the CIA to use "entertainment to brainwash the Japanese people . . . to weaken the male temperament of Japanese society".
Since then, the Chinese report, titled "Do you know how hard the CIA is working", says,
weakened male temperament has spread to other parts of east Asia.
Beijing's experts compared China's entertainment industry, which "advocates feminine male artists", to Hollywood, where "male stars are not like this, most of them are tough guys".
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