KUALA LUMPUR: Hong Kong celebrity Nicholas Tse has pledged his allegiance to China and is in the process of renouncing his Canadian citizenship.
This follows recent rumours that the 41-year-old actor, singer and chef would be blacklisted by Beijing for having dual citizenship.
In the CCTV6 show Blue Feather Reception Room, the talented artiste confessed that he was Chinese since he was born in Hong Kong, China.
He further added that he would be loyal to China and had a "sense of responsibility to spread these great things from our motherland to the whole world," referring to food, action movies and music.
Tse also admitted that he had begun applying to renounce his Canadian citizenship.
The Hong Kong-born artiste was a young boy when he followed his parents who moved to Vancouver, Canada during the 1980s.
He then had brief stints in the US and Japan before returning to Hong Kong where he was discovered by a talent scout while singing at a family party in 1996.
Tse currently holds dual Canadian and Chinese citizenship.
Meanwhile, the rumours that have been circulating on Chinese social media also name six other prominent Chinese actors with foreign citizenship on an alleged "reorganisation list" by China's National Radio and Television Administration.
They are Jet Li, Wang Lee Hom, Zhang Tielin, Crystal Liu Yifei, Will Pan and Mark Chao.
Li is currently a Singaporean, while Wang, Liu and Pan have American citizenship.
Zhang is a British citizen and Chao has Canadian citizenship.