My blog

Read more...

Rock in a hard place

Nov 27th 2008 | BEIJING
From The Economist print edition
It’s only rock and roll but the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t like it

ITS name recalls both Mao Zedong’s dictum about where political power comes from and the rose revolution in Georgia in 2003, one of several movements that unseated authoritarian regimes in post-communist societies. So it is perhaps not surprising that the fan base of Guns N’ Roses, an American rock band, seems not to include the higher ranks of the Chinese Communist Party. Then there is the matter of the band’s new album: “Chinese Democracy”.

Government spokesmen have said little about it. But Global Times, a party newspaper, has described it as a “venomous attack” and part of a Western plot “to control the world using democracy as a pawn”. All of which may flatter the band. First conceived by Axl Rose, the band’s leader, in 1994, the work features plenty of the driving rhythms, slashing guitars and screeching falsetto vocals beloved by the band’s fans.


But it offers little in the way of coherent political discourse, though the title song includes a gratuitous mention of China’s banned Falun Gong meditation movement. If there is a message, it may be the lines, perhaps addressed to the Chinese government: “You think you’ve got it all locked up inside and if you beat ’em enough they’ll die”; and “if your Great Wall rocks, blame yourself”.

The mere mention of Falun Gong is enough to preclude open distribution. Access to several of the band’s websites has been blocked in China. But anyone interested probably knows how to bypass the censors. China’s own musicians have long struggled to explore the subversive side of rock-and-roll culture without angering their government. Music-industry figures in Beijing were reluctant to speak openly about the controversy, but one marvelled privately at the “stupidity” of the panning of the album, saying Chinese rock fans might otherwise never have heard of it.

Western rockers have bumped up against the Chinese censors before. In 2006 the Rolling Stones agreed not to sing some songs in China. Others have pushed back. Björk, an Icelandic singer, shouted “Tibet!” following her song “Independence” in Shanghai this year. Such bravado hardly seems likely to shake China’s government. But who knows? Christopher Hughes, a China scholar at the London School of Economics, notes: “The history of rock shows that it beats the authorities every time, everywhere.” Mao would have disagreed.