That's right, no longer does the USA and Europe have exclusivity in the area of celebrity sex scandals, Beijing is fast becoming a hot bed of illicit activity among it's stars.

The well-known and beloved TV anchorman Zhao Zhongxiang, who is referred to as the Walter Cronkite of China, has enjoyed 40 years of popularity among his viewers until now.

After engaging in a 7-year-long extramarital affair he jilted his 38-year-old girlfriend. Thus far 74,000 people have expressed their views about it on Internet message boards with 70% siding with the girl he dumped.

What' s most interesting about this situation is that it the woman, Rao Ying, is a medical doctor, not a silicone bouncing bimbo.

The spurned lover claims she became pregnant, twice, by Zhao, and had undergone abortions in order to preserve his image as a dedicated family man, and to conceal the affair from her husband.

She has filed suit for 10,000 yuan in damages and money she claims he owes her for her therapeutic ministrations to him as a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine. The good doctor is also claiming an additional 3,800 yuan to cover her own medical care necessitated by undisclosed bodily injuries she said he caused.

This is the equivalent of about 1076 American dollars. Why bother? I guess it's the principal of the thing.

Besides playing doctor they must have been into rough sex.

Rao has offered audiotapes, letters, and get this, a-la Clinton-Lewinski, an article of "stained" clothing, although not from The Gap.

But wait there's more!

This story and others like it have moved well beyond Internet gossip groups. They are taking over the headlines in China's mainstream media which until recently spurned such stories and had reported Clinton' s indiscretions either as shameful, or overblown and unworthy of attention.

Now however, as China moves away from Communism and embraces Capitalism, the media, which is subsidized by the government, is under increasing pressure to turn a profit and become self sufficient.

Enter the gossip columnists. People it seems are the same regardless of location or cultural heritage, and the Chinese public has displayed an insatiable thirst for celebrity scandal.

The cute little fortune cookie pictured above is Zhang Yu, is an actress not involved in an affair but she did blow the lid off the story about film directors in China who trade film roles for a roll on the Chinese Casting Couch.

Zhang Yu released audiotapes of a sexual affair between her friend and the highly successful Chinese film director Huang Jianzhong after her friend told her that the 63-year-old director had refused to give her any roles for two years because of her refusal to put out.

Since blowing the whistle on the famed director she is in demand as a guest speaker and considered an expert on the subject.

Here' s a synopsis of one of the director's hit films "Unforgettable," a treatise about marriage. Hmmn.