Chinese blogger Guo Meimei breaks her silence

Guo Mei Mei, the 20-year-old Chinese blogger and aspiring celebrity, caused an uproar in June when she raised suspicions of buying luxury sports cars, designer hand bags, and going on business-class flights with money from the Red Cross. According to her online profile, she was working as the China Red Cross business manager, and net-surfers accused her of stealing funds to feed her jet-set lifestyle. She recently broke her silence, appearing on Ningxia Television’s “Decoding Finance,” hosted by “Larry” Lang Xianping. 

During the 21-minute interview, Guo Mei Mei -- accompanied by her mother Guo Dengfeng -- explained that she had lied about working for the Red Cross, and argued that none of her splendid purchases (including a white Masarati, a Lamborghini, and a sprawling villa in Beijing) were made with misappropriated funds from the Red Cross. 

Guo looked surprisingly relaxed, considering that she was recently trying to flee to Australia for the scandal that caused Red Cross donations to plummet in China. She explained the confusion over her connections to the Red Cross in this interview, translated on China Smack:  

Lang Xianping: Why did you say that you were the business general manager of the Red Cross? Tell us the truth.

Guo Meimei: Actually, I was having dinner with my godfather and them… then, during dinner, they were chatting and I overheard them talking about establishing a company called Zhong Hong Bo Ai.

Lang: Zhong Hong Bo Ai is a subordinate of the Red Cross, right? A subsidiary?

Guo: I think it cooperates with a Chamber of Commerce under the Red Cross ... Because my godfather always dotes on me, they told me to come work for the company after it’s established. I said, “Okay, but if it’s anything below general manager level”—I was joking—”I won’t do it.”

They said, “Then we’ll let you be general manager.” Actually they were just placating me like a child, and I didn’t really believe them. After a few days, I was on Weibo [a Chinese version of Twitter] … because all the friends I follow have written on their profile something like "President" or "CEO", I guess it was vanity or competitiveness that made me change my Sina-verified job from "singer and actress" to "China Red Cross Business General Manager." Actually at that time I didn’t even know the name of the company was Zhong Hong Bo Ai. I only knew that it was China-something Red-something, I only remembered those two words, so I just changed it to "China Red Cross."

Guo said her luxury cars were "birthday gifts" from her mother and godfather. Image from Sydney Morning Herald

She went on to explain that Wang Jun, who resigned from the Board of Directors of the Red Cross subsidiary company, was not her "lover" as reported by some outlets, but a godfather figure who used to be involved with her mother. 

Find out more details here: 

An English translation of interview clips here: