Chou Tzu-yu forced to apologise to Beijing

If you think that UK pop stars are a little disconnected from the struggles of everyday people, you might want to redirect your attention to South Korea, where a 16 year-old K-Pop star has been forced to read out a cringing apology to the Chinese government. But, happily, Chou Tzu-yu reads the note in such a way as to make it clear she's totally disassociated from the content.

Here's what happened: Chou is from Taiwan, and she went on TV in South Korea with her band Twice to do a song or two. During the course of her performance, she waved the Taiwanese flag about a bit.

Cue a massive shit storm.

The end result? Her panicky, pissweak management forced her to read out a prepared statement apologising to the lovely people of the Chinese government. That a K-Pop star should be forced to dance attendance on the Beijing regime is no surprise - our Chancellor and Prime Minister regularly submit themselves to lick buttholes in the hope of getting a few Yuan shoved into their hands.

But Chung managed to signal so much distance from the words she was being forced to mouth, she managed to create the least authentic pop star video since Sam Smith did the Bond theme:

It's hard to think how she could have distanced herself further from the bit of paper - perhaps if she'd have pretended the words were being dictated to her by a sock-puppet, or maybe made the "Whatevs" sign at the end of each sentence.

The funny thing is, her flag waving and the breeze it created may have helped swung the Taiwanese elections this week against the pro-China Vichyesque regime, and in favour of Tsai Ing-wen's independence party.

She's 16 and making pop music. She's also bringing geopolitical conflict to a head. What have you done today, Ellie Goulding?

Maroon 5 no longer heading for China

Maroon 5's planned dates in China aren't going to happen now. There's speculation as to why:

No official explanation has been given with a statement from Live Nation, the band’s promoter, alluding only to an unspecified “reason”.

The cancellations sparked speculation that a tweet sent by Jesse Carmichael, the group’s keyboard player, was responsible.

In the message, posted on July 4, Carmichael sent birthday wishes to the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. The musician reportedly attended a party celebrating the Buddhist leader’s 80th birthday in the United States.

The tweet, since deleted, linked to a photograph on Instagram that was also later removed.

It could be the tweet was the reason. What I suspect happened is someone in power actually heard Maroon 5 and started combing the social media output of the band looking for an excuse.

The way is still open for Ozzy to have a crack at the Parish Council

Metal star to politician isn't a typical career path, but it looks like it might work for 林昶佐 Freddy Lim out of Chthonic.

He's seeking power. In Taiwan. Taking on the Chinese state makes bands who think wearing scary masks on stage is dangerous look a little weak, doesn't it?

But then, Chthonic aren't quite a typical metal band - Freddy Lim has been chair of the Thai branch of Amnesty for a while now; they use traditional Thai instruments in their metal endeavours; and their lyrics have a political aspect to them.

That's like a party political broadcast, that it is.

Oh, and Lim formed his own political party, too. Not in the style of Bez. A proper political party. The New Power Party (I think the echo of Prince is unintentional) has been going a month, and already has persuaded two prominent human rights lawyers to stand under its banner for city elections this year.

Lim is running for the national legislature next year, and his 'not the two party system message' might sound familiar to British ears:

Lim has rejected the traditional bipolarization of the electorate into pan-blue and pan-green camps, saying that such polarization should no longer be considered effective, as Daan, like any other electoral district, is plural in nature.
“Daan is home to a heterogenous population, which includes people like me — a founding member of a minor party — and the Chinese Nationalist Party’s [KMT] Taipei mayoral candidate in last year’s elections Sean Lien (連勝文),” he said.

Frozenobit: Yao Beina

Yao Beina, Chinese pop star, has died.

She had an interesting career - she was a runner-up on the Chinese version of The Voice in 2013, but landed the job of doing the pop version of Let It Go for the Mandarian voice track on Frozen.

In a grizly turn, a Chinese news photographer apparently snuck into the morgue:

[T]he outpouring of emotion was overshadowed by allegations that three reporters from a Shenzhen newpaper posed as medical staff at the hospital and entered the morgue where her body was being kept. They took photographs, according to Yao's family, but the pictures have not been released.

The accusation sparked a debate over media ethics. "The Shenzhen reporters tried all kinds of means to get photos of Yao. It's the result of the current deformed political and social situation on the mainland, as only entertainment reporters enjoy absolutely freedom of news-gathering and reporting," said Qiao Mu, the dean of the Centre for International Communication Studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University.

Yao Beina was 23 years old; she had survived breast cancer in 2011.

Communists finally accept Lady GaGa

If you needed more evidence that Lady GaGa's early edge has long since been lost, she's being allowed back into China. CNN reports:

[I]n China, the pop diva's songs had been on a blacklist since 2011, when the Culture Ministry deemed her work to be "creating confusion in the order of the online music market, and damaging the nation's cultural security."
[...]
Lady Gaga last week responded with enthusiasm to the lifting of the ban on her Twitter feed.
"China has been given the go ahead singer I'm so excited!!!! The Chinese Government approved 'ARTPOP' to be released in China with all 15 songs! Next I hope I can come to perform!," she said on her Twitter account.

It's bittersweet, isn't it? On one hand, you're getting access again to a massive market. On the other hand, nothing says 'mostly harmless' like an endorsement from Politburo.

Kraftwerk: Robots v Communists

Kraftwerk had been due to play a festival in China...

Hang about, let's just pause there. China does full-on, three-day, Reading-Leeds style festivals these days. Remember when Wham! playing a gig there was a news item in itself?

So, Kraftwerk was supposed to be at this festival. But they've had their invitation withdrawn. Why?

Tibet. It's always Tibet. The Guardian reports:

According to reports in Beijing, the ministry of culture denied the German quartet a visa because they were scheduled to perform at a pro-Tibetan independence concert in 1999. In fact, Kraftwerk's performance at the Washington DC fundraiser was ultimately cancelled because of a lightning storm.

So what will the organisers do now?

The festival has replaced Kraftwerk with the British pop band Travis.

You see, China? Censorship only ends up hurting the censors.

And if you're thinking "blimey, swapping out Kraftwerk for Travis is a bit like replacing an iMac with a ten year-old Nokia phone", well... even the Chinese realise that:

"I can't say we are 100% confident with Travis as headliners," Zang Keyu, Modern Sky's director of performance and operations, told the state-run Global Times newspaper. "But it's a fact we have to accept."

I bet Zang Keyu is desperately combing online biographies of Fran Healy in the hope he might have called for independence for Macau.

[Thanks to Gary White for the tip]

Bob Dylan is cross with us for confusing 'pre-approval' with 'censorship'

Funny, while he was in China Bob Dylan was quiet as a mouse; now the gig has happened, he's suddenly found his voice:

"As far as censorship goes, the Chinese government had asked for the names of the songs that I would be playing," Dylan wrote on his website. "There's no logical answer to that, so we sent them the set lists from the previous three months. If there were any songs, verses or lines censored, nobody ever told me about it and we played all the songs that we intended to play."

There is a logical answer, in that you might say "why do you want the list?" or "you do know you don't get any pre-approval, don't you?" but perhaps Bob gets his set list signed off by all governing territories at each venue he plays.

Dylan doesn't bother to engage with the question of why he was so happy to indulge the Chinese government while Ai WeiWei was being held somewhere unknown, but I'm sure he has a great explanation for that one, too. My guess is he's just waiting for it to clear.

Dylan keeps Chinese government happy at worst possible time

The decision of Bob Dylan to play only those songs that the Beijing government approved of always looked a bit weak.

Playing that approved list of songs while the same government had Ai Weiwei spirited away? That seems somewhat less than heroic.

The Spectator's David Blackburn is quite laid back about Dylan's silence:

Given that it’s nearly 50 years since Dylan purposefully stopped being the ‘voice of conscience’, his reticence does not come as a shock.

Except, of course, Dylan hasn't done any such thing, never missing a chance to turn up at the White House to hook himself up to the achievements of the Civil Rights Movement.

And, as David Aaronovitch observes in today’s Times, why should Dylan do what we are too timid and politic to do?

Here's a suggestion, David and David - because we haven't been invited to play a gig approved by the people who have locked Weiwei up. I can say, fairly certainly, that even if I attempted to interest people in the news that I wasn't going to play the Beijing Academy, nobody would turn up.

Yes, our governments have been as grubby and spineless as normal, but whoever thought that "Bob Dylan is no more useless and unprincipled than William Hague" would be a phrase that he would ever aspire to?

Besides, what could he achieve?

A small amount of media focus on the wrongdoings of the Chinese state? A small crowd of the rich Chinese who'd paid for the tickets realising that they can't expect to enjoy visits from Bob Dylan and similar artists while dissidents disappear? A bit more than doing bugger all would?

Dylan’s words might be welcome to some Western ears...

Well, that would be a start - not looking like a self-obsessed, amoral, money-grubbing chimp dancing to whims of Beijing might be a positive move.

... but he’s just one man selling records.

And when did simply having a massive audience and a global platform ever count for anything, eh?

He does not command divisions, even in the metaphorical sense. Human rights violations in China are for governments to challenge. Perhaps Dylan's silence expresses that.

Perhaps. You don't really believe that, though, do you, David? If Dylan wanted to say 'look, I'm just a humble singer of songs, I'm not going to get involved in politics as that's for governments to do', he could have said that. But he'd presumably not bother, as it would sound like a weaselly statement trying to smudge over the grisly spectacle of having to turn up his amp to drown out the cries of tortured dissidents (no wonder Dylan went electric - can you imagine trying to drown that out with an acoustic guitar?).

Even if Dylan had stepped down from being the voice of a generation's conscience when it stopped being convenient, are we supposed to accept that he also detached his personal conscience as well?

Bob Dylan happy to take requests from Beijing

Bob Dylan has happily agreed to play dates in China with a set list approved by the government.

Sure, it's easy to say things like "remember when Dylan was a protest singer" and "wasn't there a political singer called Bob Dylan a few years back? Whatever happened to him" and "what a craven, spineless lickspittle", but let's not forget what a large market China is.

Bob Dylan discovers forbidden city in Beijing

The Chinese authorities have decided that they don't want Bob Dylan playing Beijing. Or, for that matter, Shanghai. His China tour is thus off.

Apparently the Chinese government heard he'd let his music be used in ads for the Co-Op, and concluded that sounded a little too much like socialism for them to be comfortable with him turning up.

Whatever the actual reason, Dylan has scythed off a whole slew of other dates:

The verdict scuppers Dylan's plans to play his first dates in mainland China. The singer, who plays around 100 concerts a year on his Never Ending Tour, had hoped to extend a multi-city Japanese leg with concerts in Beijing, Shanghai, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong. All these would now be called off, Wu told the newspaper.

"With Beijing and China ruled out, it was not possible for him just to play concerts in Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan," he said. "The chance to play in China was the main attraction for him. When that fell through everything else was called off."

I'm not sure that quite makes sense - "yeah, I really fancied playing Beijing so somehow organised a date in Seoul to make it happen"? It's not like Dylan's putting on a U2 style epic, and surely once the stuff has made it to Japan you might as well take it to Korea? Wouldn't the dates in China have been the more expensive part of the jaunt, given that there's less rock and roll infrastructure there - wouldn't axing those two dates make the others more lucrative?

And besides: allowing the Chinese government to effectively deny the people of Hong Kong and South Korea a gig they'd like to see? Is Dylan really sure he wants to play along with that?

Oasis get in scuffle with Chinese government

Oasis had been due to play China, only now they're not. Why?

Depends on who you believe, really. The promoter suggests that the economic downturn was the reason; the band insist permission to reform was revoked when the Chinese government discovered Noel Gallagher once took part in a Free Tibet concert.

Hard to believe that Noel Gallagher ever stood up about anything, other than Jay-Z playing Glastonbury.

China unimpressed with Chinese Democracy

Mouthpiece of the Chinese communists, the Global Times has not prepared a garland for the new Guns N Roses album:

In an article Monday headlined "American band releases album venomously attacking China," the Global Times said unidentified Chinese Internet users had described the album as part of a plot by some in the West to "grasp and control the world using democracy as a pawn."

The album "turns its spear point on China," the article said.

To be fair, though, that's not amongst the worst reviews the record has had.

Surprisingly, given the Chinese authorities have had nearly two decades to prepare for the release of the record, you'd think they'd have something better lined up for a response:

China's Foreign Ministry did not respond to faxed questions about the article, although a spokesman speaking on routine condition of anonymity said: "We don't need to comment on that."

Spokesmen for the Culture Ministry and State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, government bodies that regulate album releases and performances, could not be reached for comment.

We're given to understand the American embassy in Beijing has briefed the Pentagon that top-ranking Chinese are too busy trying to work out a way to participate in the free Dr Pepper programme to release a formal statement on the record.

It's not only the Chinese who are angry that Guns N Roses' Chinese Democracy is reflecting badly on them. The NRA has called a press conference to remind Americans that guns aren't actually such cranky, temperamental things as the band would suggest, while Bob Flowerdew was seen in his garden, sobbing, as he pruned the last of his Rosa Black Magic.

Left wanting: Future Of The Left cancel plans

In order to better concentrate on the putting together of an album:

"We have been unable to write the second record and we are increasingly aware of the need to do so. We want to get it out before summer so we can spend next year playing it to people.

"It is against everything the band stands for to pull shows, or anything that we have already committed to doing, and we apologise to everyone who had bought a ticket or was going to come along.

"We will be back as soon as we can next year and we promise to make it worth the wait."

They seem to be canceling because of writer's block, then. It's not just UK fans who will be disappointed; they're also pulling dates in Australia and China as well. China. It's not so long ago that western bands playing in China was such an event you'd no more cancel the dates as you would miss your own wedding.

Linkin Park park China

Chester Bennington has done his back in - probably trying to dance like a teenager. As a result, they're no longer going to play dates in China and Taiwan. The Chinese people have issued a formal statement to the effect that they're not that disappointed.

Forty-three dead in nightclub blaze

More miserable news: at least 43 people are believed to have burned to death in a fire at a Shenzen city nightclub. In an echo of the Rhode Island Great White fire, early investigations are suggesting that the blaze was caused by the use of fireworks on-stage, and the injuries were compounded by a stampede for the exit.

IFPI Hong Kong implodes

The Hong Kong branch of the IFPI - the international wing of the RIAA - has suddenly collapsed like a yeti going down an escalator. All four international majors have quit with plans to establish a local group to dance to their whims.

If there's no sense in Sony Hong Kong being part of an international body, what sense is there in Sony UK being part of the same group?

The nature of the fudge it's creating has been captured by Music 2dot0:

Our sources have clarified that the pull out is contained within the Hong Kong market only and the major labels’ international membership with the IFPI will continue while the IFPI’s satellite office in China will still represent the majors but in due course, it is expected that the majors will reel in China too.

Clear, huh?

Not that it could be a test for a global model, or anything like that

Under the cover of thick smog and the sound of party officials muttering "can't we just tell them the Olympics are off?", Google has launched a legal music download service in China. Search returns legal downloads; everyone takes a slice of advertising revenue:

"The Internet industry should by no means stand in the opposite camp against the music industry," Google China President Kai-fu Lee said in a statement.

"Google always believes profoundly that mutual interest, rather than monopoly, is the key to sustainable growth."

We suspect either that quote has been machine-translated, or possibly written by a machine in the first place.

China: The Sex Clarke Five will never be invited now

It seems Bjork's decision to shout "Tibet Tibet" while playing Shanghai has frightened the life out of the Chinese government. Yes, although nobody else (bar the odd journalist and some swans) has been bothered by anything Bjork has done for decades, she's finally got a reaction.

The Chinese government are busy guys, repressing left, right and centre, but they've taken steps to ensure that nothing like that ever happens again:

"Any artistic group or individual who have ever engaged in activities which threaten our national sovereignty will not be allowed in," the Ministry of Culture said in a statement on its website.

During performances, entertainers who "threaten national unity", "whip up ethnic hatred", "violate religious policy or cultural norms" or "advocate obscenity or feudalism and superstition", will also be banned, the rules state.

Coldplay have announced plans to drop the song 'Let's Reorganise on Feudalist Lines' from their set, in the hope of being able to play Beijing someday.

Won't someone please think of the ordinary Chinese?

Interesting watching those banking large cheques from the Chinese government trying to justify taking part in their marketing campaign. Latest to flap in the wind is Will.I.Am, who clearly isn't going to turn down a big payday just because the money is coming from a repressive government:

The star called the recent crackdown in Tibet "messed up", but asked whether it was right to "punish a whole country".

"If America really wants to make a difference, it should stop importing China's products and pay back its debt," he added.

Aha. So, it would be wrong to "punish" a country by not letting them hear his music (is the whole country going to his gig, then?) but it'd be better to not buy their stuff - presumably, then, forcing ordinary Chinese out of work is, in Will.I.Am's crazy world less of a blow to them than not getting to hear about the super-rich in one city turning out to hear a Black Eyed Pea gig.

"They have all this Chinese boycott stuff - they want to boycott the games," he said, "but do the people get punished when they have nothing to do with what's going on?"

He hasn't quite understood how cultural boycotts work, has he? The idea is to remove legitimacy from a regime by stopping treating it like it's a normal nation doing normal things. We don't know if Mr. Am wants to spend some time reading about the powerful effects of the sporting and cultural boycotts of apartheid South Africa, if he ever gets a chance between balancing his pocketbooks.

"If you boycott China, when do they boycott America for what we're doing in Iraq?" he added.

Well, yes. That would kind of be the point, wouldn't it?

People killing people dying
Children hurtin you hear them crying
Can practice what you preach
Would you turn the other cheek?

It turns out, yes, Will.I.Am is delighted to turn the other cheek.

Quincy Jones: Dupe?

Quincy Jones is continuing to help the Chinese out arranging their Olympic Games ceremonies, because erm, he isn't going to pull out:

"It's not my intention to withdraw from the Olympics," he was to say in his speech. "I care too much about Darfur and China and if I can stay in the game with others like us, I feel we can make a difference."

Jones hopes to have a role in assembling an ad-hoc committee to "go to Khartoum to sit down and try to get something done," he said. "The whole world has got to start taking responsibility for each other. With communication, you can no longer afford the luxury of thinking of national kinds of issues. Everything that's done anywhere is a world issue, and together there's lots of things we can do that nobody can do alone."

China can become "a hero in the eyes of the world" by sending United Nations African peace enforcers to the Darfur region, stopping arms imports to the area and calling on Khartoum to force the Janajaweed militia to cease its attacks on civilians, Jones said.

So, arranging the Olympics, which is China's attempt to present itself as a modern, friendly, kinda-democratic place, is the right thing to do because "business as usual" is the right message to send?

Does Jones really not see that his continued support for the regime - and the assistance he's giving to their massive sport-themed marketing push this summer - is far, far more valuable than some vague plan about sending an "ad-hoc committee" to see that "something must be done"? Unless Jones has a secret clause in his contract forcing China to address its terrible record, all he's doing is propping up Beijing. Oh, and he's not even going to bother about Tibet at all:

Jones said he is less focused on China's role in Tibetan violence because it "is a difficult one to solve in three months. There's so much history behind it. But Sudan is happening every day. We're talking about babies dying in Darfur, so that one has got me personally."

So, not even bothered about the violent crushing of dissent in Tibet because, ooh, it's a tricky one. Let's not go there, then.