From the Sydney Morning Herald today on the censoring of Karaoke singing in China -
“The Ministry of Culture has issued new rules to prevent ‘unhealthy’ songs from ringing forth in the sing-along bars, and to safeguard intellectual property rights.
The Government has picked three cities, Wuhan, Zhengzhou and Qingdao, to test the program, under which member businesses will choose songs from a central database. If successful, the program may go nationwide.
‘All the songs in the database for use by karaoke parlours and consumers need to be censored’ to ensure content meets government standards, Liang Gang, from the Ministry of Culture, told state media.
Media analysts said Beijing’s karaoke initiative was aimed at wiping out songs with sexual or vaguely political lyrics or those that seeped across the border from Taiwan and Hong Kong bearing foreign slang.”
It’s one thing to control indecency, and we do that in various ways in the west as well. However trying to control political expression is a reminder that despite all of the economic transformation in the past few years, China remains a communist country opposed to freedom of thought as we know it in the west.