Last week China announced a ban on hip hop culture. More specifically, there is to be no depiction of “hip hop culture, subculture (non- mainstream culture) and dispirited culture (decadent culture).” Oh, and no actors with tattoos either.
“Absolutely do not use actors whose heart and morality are not aligned with the party and whose morality is not noble,” was one of several directives highlighted in a statement released by the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, the country’s official body responsible for censorship and fun-killing.
The move seems to have stemmed from a fallout with a Chinese hip hop artist over accusations of him being a bad influence, and comes against the backdrop of a burgeoning scene for the genre across China.
Rapper PG One (real name: Wang Hao), got into trouble for his track ‘Christmas Eve,’ which features disrespectful lyrics about women (“Too much pussy… can’t keep track”) as well as seeming to endorse drug use (mentions of “white powder” and “kush,” otherwise known as cannabis).
After state media zeroed in on PG One, and got a forced apology out of him, his fellow Putonghua rapper, Gai – aka Zhou Yan – became the next target. A contestant on the talent show ‘I Am a Singer,’ Gai was suddenly pulled from it without explanation. Both were former winners of another show called ‘The Rap of China.’ Another artist, the female rapper Vava, was also unexpectedly removed from yet another TV show as the campaign expanded.
Say what you like about hip hop music and the mores associated with it – and yes, there’s plenty of valid criticism to be made of the genre’s overall treatment of violence and substance abuse, and its misogyny – but to outlaw an entire culture is absurd.
First of all, if we’re going to start targeting specific genres for promoting negative lifestyles, how about the country songs that seem to advocate gun use, or the emo music that often seems a little too preoccupied with suicide?
The real issue here, though, is China’s intolerance for anything that’s different. As we all know by now, hip hop is by no means an isolated target.
Take China’s stance on Christmas, for example. In the lead-up to the festival last year, there was a big crackdown. Not for the first time, there were reports of churches being shut down, and many Christians are scared to worship openly. At the University of South China, in Hunan province, members of the Communist Party’s Youth League were asked to sign a pledge that they would not participate in Christmas-related celebrations and abide by “the faith of communism.” (That’s right, a political system that no-one has any choice over is touted as a religion.)
Like the assault on hip hop, being against Christmas is spun as a way of advocating Chinese culture and patriotism. But really it’s just another way for the Chinese Communist Party to denigrate beliefs or culture that originated elsewhere.
Anything or anyone deemed to be in opposition to the core values of the CPC is automatically viewed with suspicion. All threats must be headed off by an appeal to a higher power – just like Christianity, come to think of it, only more authoritarian.
But what the party’s sudden revulsion against hip-hop shows is that China’s inexhaustible efforts to control cultural output and expression are not limited to wiping out conflicting political stances. Theirs is an all-out cull on anyone having their own voice.
Why is it so difficult for China to bear the thought of people thinking for themselves? The country’s seemingly ever-shrinking space for opposing opinions, self-expression and individuality terrifies me. As a Hongkonger, it sometimes makes me averse to even visiting (and that’s not just because I love hip hop music).
The world thinks of China as the world’s rising superpower, and an endlessly exciting place to be. But it’s becoming clear that this is to a large extent hype: it’s also an unreconstructed authoritarian regime that is becoming stricter and stricter, and in many ways more and more closed off. China may soon bestride the world, but it seems the Communist Party still wants to control the bits of Chinese are allowed to be interested in.
Cultural insecurity:
Look Man, KFC and McDonald’s is one thing, they’re business enterprises…
Having weirdos *(plural)* as Miky Jacksons who plays with their little brothers while in stage and/or [POPULARISING and/or IDOLISING CULTURES SUCH AS OPRAH WINDFRY IN CHINA] by talk show hosts who takes bed-wetting in the west rather than in their own front lawns is quite another. These practices are definitely not my cup of oolong tea….
As such, and if the Loo’s and/or the Anastasia Lins of the world of the Chinese loves to play with western banjos rather than the Chinese erhu’s, by all means lets them slipping throughs this Chinese cracks cos there’s plenty more where they come from who takes deep pride in their Chinese-Aryan-heritage than they do others.
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Thank you. Very important to note, especially as my admiration of China has been rising strongly as of late. My recent understanding is that Faceboook, Google and Whatsapp are banned. What’s left of the Internet?? The question is: Yet how can we criticize a system whose industry and products have so greatly benefitted the U.S.? All of us? It’s sad for sure but just how much right do we have to criticize? Last time I checked all my electronics, Christmas lights and Christmas ornaments were made there. Ironic isn’t it that they supply us with all our Christmas and Buddhist knick-knacks. Our sympathies should be with the workers and our admiration – reluctantly – for the system. Thoughts?
In its benign form in the arts, pop culture is a natural evolutionary process.
But, as in such other human activities as in food production, pharmaceuticals, research, etc. it quickly develops as a precursor to social cancer, and other maladies the moment it is seen and used by predator political strategists as an effective agent to promote their agenda to destabilize other countries and to control the world.
Add a dose of so-called human rights, economic aids laced with conditionalities, etc. and you have all the ingredients of a sure-fire formula for socio-economic & political decay, as what happened to the Philippines in the last thirty years under the rule of the liberals.
Shrewed political elders, seasoned by experience, patriotic devotion for their countries, respect for independence, national integrity and sovereignty, are just too smart to fall for the cheap ploys of these foreign agents to be injected into their system.
Those who allow themselves to be the lapdogs of the bully, to spread this contagion, i.e. this political virus to infect the world, destroy cultures and civilization, are just a pathetic lot, so disgusting.
Before the mouthpieces of the global bully, i.e. no other than the US, go into their frenzied yakitty-yak under their not-so-covered cloak of deceptive propaganda in the name of so-called human rights, freedom and dem????CRAZY, they should look first at the mother-of-all shamefull acts that their benefactor had done to all its own citizens, having
F????????CKED up their once-model culture and ruined the economy and the lives of its ordinary and the middle class citizens. As such, it could hardly be considered by any stretch of the human imagination, as a model, a teacher, much less a leader worthy to be emulated and followed.
Lastly, have you ever considered how difficult and challenging it is for a large country as China, to effectively manage 1.4 billion people, constantly hounded, intimidated, subverted, etc. by this bully and its dogs, and still emerges as a respectable world economy? Your master had not even managed to sustain the socio-economic & political well-being of its own citizens, even with just barely a quarter of China’s population.????????????????
So . .
So, stop posturing yourselves as LAPDOGS and RIDICULOUS CLOWNS.????????????
Reminds us of the West pushing opium drug culture upon the Chinese at the point of guns and cannons.
The elites of Hollywood is out to destroy the West with decadent culture, promotion of anarchy and Satanism, anti-White and Christian legacy, gay and sexual revolutions. Chaos and splitism will enable a small elite group to control and rule the West and thence the world with much help from the control of the military and police.
5000 years of culture? Dude ur culture is already dead and stinking since the so called cultural revolution
GOOD for CHINA!!!
No society can have an "open door" policy to every gutter level cultural expression from other nations, especially nations like America who is in an advanced state of culural decay with major indicators such as drug and disease epidemics, violent oriented society, vulgar language, gang style behavior etc.
Why in the world would China want this? Why would even America want this but that is separate issue. Part of America’s cultural decline is too much acceptance of anything.
Yeah. For some strange reason the Chinese leadership thinks that this kind of music performance by youth
is superior to this
Hip-hop is the sound of deprived, brain-damaged American ghetto culture. No country that wants a future will promote this kind of bilge.
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One visit to any Chinese city will show wide acceptance of foreign influence.. yes even western. Doubt very much culture insecurity was at play when Chinese government cracked down on hip hop,deeming it a bad influence on society. the only insecurity might be the journalist’s sense of identity. And the only thing really reeking is her opportunistic criticism ,hoping to advance her career.
The rapper was banned because he denigrades women which contributes to the low standard of morality and decadence, don’t you think?
Hip Hop, like Rap, is a Blacky street corner thingy. And, when we, the Chinese civilization stoop as low as to go for Hop Hops and popularizes Michael Hackson’s grabbing of his crouches thingy as a pop culture, then, what that signifies is that the Chinese species, like the [White] Lives Matters species, too are in deep and serious trouble. "Where Have All The Chinese Flowers https://youtu.be/bI3QVsW30j0 Gone " Sad. So sad for the world of the Chinese.
Re CCP killed 80 million:
How many had the colonialists "MURDERED" throughout its qwest for world conquest since it murdered its way through the Americas, through WW1 and 2, through its colonialization of the middleast, of the continent of Africa, of Persia, of south Asia, of Indochina and of Korea?
Re Chinese most tolerant:
I said it once and I’ll say again:
Japs are family. Japs might be the black sheep of the Chinese family, but they are nonetheless still family. Japs are descended of the 5000 member strong expedition [ordered by the Qin court] to go to this magical Island in eastern seas in search of the magical elixir which supposedly prolongs life.
This expedition consists of nobilities of the Qin court, Knights, other military personnels dispatched to accompany the expedition, doctors, al chemists, scboolars, maids, blacksmiths, cooks, stable hands, other servants and, heads will roll if they return home empty handed. So why return?…
"Why not establish a Kingdom of one’s own instead of facing imminent death through execution?"
They started a society of their own instead and they expanded from there.
Based on this state logic, China therefore "MUST" let bygones be bygones berween Japan and. China and, she "MUST" explore the possibilty of a new era of Chinese Japanese relationship because, we can’t bury our head in the past indefinitely.
Truth: we’ve allowed atrocities commited by the Chinese KMT, which I am sure have to be just as notorious and inhumane if not more so upon the Chinese maases be bygones so why not same for the sins of another bretgeren — Japan???
Look, it was war time. There are no ethics or remorses in war, any war. Vietnam and Korea a fine example of remorses and ethics — all are mass murders macerated under the pretext (proxy) of containment of communism.
So, why the different standard for a generation of Japanese who have nothing to do with the acts and atrocities commited by their predecessors?
I know many a Chinese who had taken Japanese women for spouses and vise versa of course. I mean isn’t it unfair of us to "BLAIM" this newer generation of Japanese for the atrocities of their predecessors? i think it is.
Alternatively, are we going to start and question the blood thirsty ways of Emperors Qin who hustory has it mudered untold numbers of his opponents by burying them live, whole families and all, in ditches because they rebel again Qin empire? We should!
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The Chinese are one of the most tolerant people. After World War 2, there were tens of thousands of orphans of Japanese settlers left behind in China. They were adopted and brought up by poor Chinese peasants despite the Japanese atrocities against the Chinese. Subsequently a lot of them went back to Japan where they were irrationally reviled and discriminated against by the Japanese populace.
Banning vulgarity and worshipping drug culture is what responsible governments do and nothing to do with intolerance.
The author should explore Chinese culture and music. She will be amazed at and enjoy the variety and chinese folk versions of rip rap rather than denigrating the wonderful and humane culture of an ancient civilisation. I did so and my life is richer for the experience.
I can’t stand hip hop and tatoos.
With some exceptions, hip hop is dominated by decadence. In the US, middle and working class Black people frown on hip hop and don’t want their children exposed to it for its often violent and misogynist lyrics. It doesn’t have to be this way, but it is what results when cultural trends are sifted through a corrupt capitalist sieve. You can be sure the ban will be criticized by the usual "human rights" crowd in the West. When was the Internationale ever played in the Western media?
And the CCP has been killing 80 million Chinese…What’s your point?
The article was pretty well written I have to say , and well in touch with reality unlike your comment that made no sense at all, I wasted 5 minutes of my life and needed aspirin afterwards
Why blame the Communist Party? Why not just blame the Chinese Government? Your "But really it’s just another way for the Chinese Communist Party to denigrate beliefs or culture that originated elsewhere." is totally untrue because your judgement or conclusion is predicated on first the evaluator being a Westerner or a white man.
Whatever the ideology the ‘Emperor’ (the new form of Chinese Government is just a new form of an Emperor in a corporeal abstract) its ‘mandate from heaven’ requires that it maintains the continuing integral existence of the 5000+ living antiquity that is the Chinese people and civilisation. Would you change Jewry into Hinduism because it is by chance a modern global craze? No!
That is not suggesting that the Chinese or China should not evolve with the times, to keep up with the times. As it has in terms of the global capitalistic way of doing business.
But, speaking metaphorically, genetically a cat cannot wish to be a dog. Yes, to survive it might have to modify its feline psyche to include canine features or attributes, if it is now a goddamn dog’s world out there. Western fads and trends are therefore ‘welcome’, so long as the are first suitably modified before being bespoked so as to keep and maintain the integrity of what it is to be Chinese or China.
If you want China to be a replica of the U.S. why not just live in the West and degrade and deride and denigrate the Chinese culture through your Charlie Chan and Fu Manchu impersonations? And yet you are so thick skinned and a ‘banana’ as not to know what pornographic vulgar terms they call you by off the print media, for your insidious gripe about what is being done to protect and preserve the integrity of being Chinese. We Chinese should be declared as requiring protection as a living historical anthropological heritage. Why preserve the pyramids and other ancient inanimate monoliths? Why artificially maintain an artificial zoo? We are an authentic living ancient natural zoo of antiquity that seeks to preserve our uniqueness on our own at our own will and resources. We do not need outsiders like dogs telling us cats to be dogs because dogs are superior and rule supreme. We are quite happy to keep to our cat or kitten sex appeal.