In China, celebrities can dominate public discourse and shape popular culture, but they are under the state's close gaze. Recent studies have revealed how the state disciplines and co-opts celebrities to promote patriotism, foster traditional values and spread political propaganda. However, how do celebrities adapt to the changing political environment? Focusing on political signalling on the social media platform Sina Weibo, we analyse a novel dataset and find that the vast majority of top celebrities repost from official accounts of government agencies and state media outlets, though there are variations. Younger celebrities with more followers tend to repost from official accounts more often. Celebrities from Taiwan tend to repost less than those from the mainland and Hong Kong, despite being subject to the same rules. However, the frequent political signalling by the most influential celebrities among younger generations suggests that the state has co-opted celebrity influence on social media to broadly promote its political objectives.

在中国，名人可以主导公共话语并塑造流行文化，但他们处于国家的密切关注之下。最近的研究揭示了国家如何惩戒和利用名人来促进爱国主义、培养传统价值观和强化政治宣传。但名人如何适应不断变化的政治环境呢？集中于在微博上发送政治信号这一现象，我们分析了一个新的数据集，发现绝大多数顶级名人都会转发政府机构和官方媒体的微博博文，但是这种转发行为也有差异。拥有更多追随者的年轻的名人倾向于更多地从官方账户转发。尽管受到相同规则的限制，台湾名人的转发率往往低于大陆和香港名人。然而，年轻一代中最有影响力的名人频繁发出政治信号表明，国家已经利用名人在社交媒体上的影响力来更广泛地促进其政治目标。