As China steps up controls on culture, the show is off

The cancellations rippled across the country: a Japanese choir band toured China, stand-up comedy shows in several cities, jazz shows in Beijing. In the span of a few days, the performances were among more than a dozen that were abruptly called off – some just minutes before they were due to start – with virtually no explanation.

Just before the performances were canceled, authorities in Beijing had fined a Chinese comedy studio about $2 million after one of the stand-up artists was accused of insulting the Chinese military in a prank; police in northern China also detained a woman who had defended the comedian online.

Those fines, and the sudden wave of cancellations that followed, point to the growing scrutiny of China’s already heavily censored creative landscape. China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, has made art and culture a central arena for ideological repression, demanding artists align their creative aspirations with the aims of the Chinese Communist Party and propagate a nationalist vision of Chinese identity. Artists must submit scripts or set lists for vetting, and publications are closely monitored.

On Tuesday, Mr. Xi sent a letter to the National Art Museum of China for its 60th birthday, reminding staff to “adhere to proper political orientation.”

Xi’s emphasis on the arts is also part of a broader concern for national security and eliminating supposedly malign foreign influence. Authorities have raided the corporate offices of several Western consulting or consulting firms in China in recent weeks, broadening the range of conduct covered by counterintelligence laws.

Many of the canceled events would feature foreign performers or speakers.

It was only to be expected that Beijing would also look to the cultural realm, as deteriorating relations with the West have left the country more fixated on maintaining its grip on power domestically, said Zhang Ping, a former journalist and political commentator in China who now lives in Germany.

“One way to respond to fear of power is to increase control,” says Mr. Zhang, who writes under the pseudonym Chang Ping. “Dictatorships have always tried to control people’s entertainment, speech, laughter and tears.”

While the party has long regulated the arts — one of the goals of the Cultural Revolution was creative work deemed insufficiently “revolutionary” — its intensity has increased sharply under Mr Xi. In 2021, a state-sponsored performing arts association published a list of guidelines for morality for artists, including regulations for patriotism. In the same year, the government banned “sissy men” from appearing on television, accusing them of weakening the nation.

Officials have also taken note of stand-up comedy, which has gained popularity in recent years and provided a rare medium for limited barbs about life in contemporary China. The government has fined a comedian for making jokes about last year’s corona lockdown in Shanghai. People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, published a commentary in November that said jokes should be “moderate” and noted that stand-up as an art form was a foreign import; the Chinese name for stand-up, ‘tuo kou xiu’, is itself a transliteration of ‘talk show’.

The recent crackdown began after an anonymous social media user complained about a set performed by a popular stand-up comedian, Li Haoshi, on May 13 in Beijing. Mr. Li, who goes by the stage name House, had said watching his two adopted stray dogs chase a squirrel reminded him of a Chinese military slogan: “Maintain exemplary conduct, fight to win.” The user suggested that Mr. Li had slanderously compared soldiers to wild dogs.

Outrage grew among nationalist social media users, and authorities soon mounted up. In addition to fining Xiaoguo Culture Media, the company Mr Li controls, authorities – saying the prank had a “despicable societal impact” – indefinitely suspended the company’s performances in Beijing and Shanghai. Xiaoguo fired Mr. Li and the Beijing police said they were investigating him.

Within hours of the fine being announced on Wednesday, stand-up show organizers in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and eastern Shandong province canceled their performances. A few days later, Chinese social media platforms suspended the accounts of Uncle Roger, a British-based Malaysian comic whose real name is Nigel Ng; Mr. Ng had posted a video poking fun at the Chinese government on Twitter (which is banned in mainland China).

But the apparent consequences weren’t limited to comedy. Scheduled musical performances also began to disappear, including a stop in South China by one Shanghai rock band that includes foreign members, a folk music festival in Beijing and several jazz performances, and a Canadian rapper show in the southern city of Changsha.

The frontman of a Buddhist-influenced Japanese choral group, Kissaquo, said on Wednesday that his concert in the southern city of Guangzhou had been canceled that night. Hours later, the frontman, Kanho Yakushiji, said a gig in Hangzhou, in eastern China, had also been cancelled. And the next day he announced that the shows in Beijing and Shanghai had also been cancelled.

“I was writing a setlist but stopped halfway through,” said Mr Yakushiji, whose management company did not respond to a request for comment. wrote on his Facebook page. “I still don’t understand the meaning of all this. I have nothing but regrets.”

Organizers’ announcements for nearly all of the canceled events mentioned “force majeure,” a term that means force majeure — and often used in China as shorthand for government pressure.

Stand-up show organizers have not returned requests for comment. Several organizers of canceled musical performances denied that they had been instructed not to perform foreigners. An employee at a music venue in Nanjing that canceled a tribute to Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto said not enough tickets had been sold.

Some of the foreign musicians whose performances have been canceled can now perform in other cities or on other stages.

But a foreign musician in Beijing, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said his band would play in a bar on Sunday and the venue had been told a few days before that the performance had been canceled because foreigners’ performances would cause problems. cause.

Lynette Ong, a professor of Chinese politics at the University of Toronto, said it was unlikely that the central government had issued direct instructions to fuel the recent cultural repression. Local governments or site owners, aware of how the political environment had changed, were likely to be particularly cautious, she said.

“In Xi’s China, people are so scared and anxious that they become extremely risk averse,” she said. “In general, it’s a very paranoid party.”

In the past, when nationalism had gone to extremes, or local officials were overzealous in enforcing the rules, the central government would eventually step in to cool down the rhetoric, in part to preserve economic or diplomatic relations. But Professor Ong said Beijing’s current emphasis on security above all would not be a reason to intervene here.

“If people aren’t watching comedy, there’s no loss to the party,” she said.

Joy Dong And Li you contributed research.