Get it straight, Zhang Ziyi is not a prostitute.  The star of “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “Memoirs of a Geisha” has reached an undisclosed settlement with a US-based website which has apologized for false reports that she was paid to have sex with top Chinese officials.

Ziyi released a statement on her Chinese social media website saying, “Nineteen months, and nearly 600 nights and days, is perhaps not very long for a scandal case, but it is long enough to destroy an innocent person's reputation.”

Boxun News, which put the false stories on its website, today has run a profuse apology to the actress for initially erporting “negative and untrue information” about Zhang, which had been “insupportable and improper.”  It added that its anonymous sources “cannot support the information reported.”

Beginning in May 2012, Boxun published a series of stories, now revealed to be bogus, claiming that she dated billionaires in exchange for cash and presents, and had sex with Chinese officials including ousted Politburo member Bo Xilai.  Bo was sentenced to life in prison in September for embezzlement, taking bribes and abuse of power.

Boxun is the sister organization of China Free Press, which has gotten more than half a million dollars from the “National Endowment for Democracy”, which in also distributes funding to a set of US business and labor groups, including one that is accused of taking part in coup d’etats in Haiti and Honduras.

Ziyi Zhang still has lawsuits pending against two other media outlets in Hong Kong; hearings in those cases are scheduled for next month.