China’s online fan club culture is the product of “capital and technology” deployed by internet companies, and Beijing’s crackdown is justified as it is difficult for teenagers to break free from their grip, according to Xiang Biao, director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany. Online fan circles, or informal virtual communities centred around an idol, have attracted Beijing’s attention and become the latest target of a government crackdown. People’s Daily , the Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece, said on Friday that “the deformed fan circle must be regulated”. China’s internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, is…