What do Bjork, Blackpink’s Lisa, BTS, Maroon 5, Jon Bon Jovi and the Britpop band Oasis all have in common? You guessed it! Each has been banned, censored or subjected to mass denouncement under the all-seeing eye of the Chinese Communist Party for, variously, supporting Tibet, participating in un-Marxist activities like burlesque, tweeting the Dalai Lama a happy birthday or even merely sharing pain with U.S. citizens over the Korean War.
If this is how China seeks to control freedom of expression from celebrities in countries that it does not want to take over in the near future, imagine the level of attention it pays to cultural figures in those parts of the world where it does wish to establish imminent forever-rule.
Enter Chen Hsin-hung (陳信宏), more commonly known as Ashin (阿信), the lead singer of Mayday, perhaps Taiwan’s biggest rock band, who, after reportedly refusing Chinese Communist Party overtures to make pro-China comments as Taiwan prepares for a presidential election, has suddenly found himself accused of lip-synching by a Chinese influencer and engulfed in a subsequent social media storm, following a recent concert in Shanghai.
News of Ashin’s apparent fake singing then surged to the top of the trending items on China’s choreographed internet, where at least one legal expert whipped up the prospect that the band could be taken to court over consumer fraud, sued by ticket-purchasers for three times the value of their tickets or effectively banned from stepping on stage for life. From there, it predictably broke into state-controlled traditional media.
Since lip-synching is illegal under China’s Regulations on the Administration of Commercial Performances, the Shanghai Municipal Administration of Culture and Tourism has jumped in on the “scandal” and opened an investigation into the band, while Beijing law enforcement and the China Association of Performing Arts are said to be monitoring the situation with a view to their own possible punitive actions in the future. B’In Music, the label that Mayday jointly founded, is also liable to sanction.
Now accusations are flying across the Taiwan Strait. B’In denies that Mayday has deceived its audiences. Taiwan intelligence is accusing Beijing of trying to force the band to influence its country’s voters toward China’s preferred candidates in the forthcoming presidential election on January 13. And China’s Taiwan Affairs Office has countered that the Taiwan government is “intentionally fabricating rumors” over the matter.
While the ins and outs of the incident will never be known, the Chinese Communist Party certainly seems to be working little devilries behind the scenes to draw the Taiwanese electorate away from the current incumbents and towards politicians who would be more amenable to Taiwan’s amalgamation with China. Moreover, it has been calling in favors from Taiwan’s celebrity sphere over the past few years on a variety of topics, which would be consistent with leaning on Mayday members to drop a few pro-China lines into their concert asides.
For instance, in 2019, at the age of just 18, the Taiwan-born singer and actress Ouyang Nana (歐陽娜娜) performed a song titled “My Motherland and Me” on Chinese state television to affirm that she holds a harmonious Chinese identity, not a separatist Taiwanese one. In an interview accompanying the performance, Ouyang confirmed the Chinese Communist Party’s line that people are Chinese no matter whether they are born in Taiwan or Beijing and wished the People’s Republic of China to thrive and flourish on the 70th anniversary of its founding. A few days earlier, she had been edited out of a televised image due to concerns over her and her family’s patriotism towards Beijing and was hence demonstrating her loyalty.
A couple of years later, when clothing retailer H&M announced that it would no longer use material sourced in East Turkestan (Xinjiang) over fears that China was implementing a forced labor regime there, several Taiwanese stars including Janine Chang (張鈞甯), Show Lo (羅志祥), Eddie Peng (彭于晏) and (again) Ouyang Nana threw their weight behind a campaign to “support Xinjiang cotton” and boycott Western brands that took a human rights stand on the matter. Then, during the COVID-delayed and controversial Beijing Winter Olympics, a speed-skating member of the Taiwanese team, Huang Yu-ting (黃郁婷), went viral after taking the highly unusual step of dressing up in China’s kit to train and posting the results on social media.
Meanwhile, anybody associated with Taiwanese independence can be unceremoniously dropped from major projects, regardless of whether they truly hold such opinions. In 2016, the actor Leon Dai (戴立忍) was removed from an Ali Baba-backed movie after allegations surfaced that he was a separatist. As with Mayday, the storm began with social media vilifications that spiraled into demands for affirmation that Taiwan only exists as a part of China, which Dai was not deemed to have adequately performed.
Because the Taiwanese market is relatively small, limiting the commercial and sponsorship prospects for actors, singers, athletes and others with star potential, the Chinese Communist Party can offer huge temptations: access to an audience of hundreds of millions, fame and money that would be difficult for Mandarin-speakers to achieve without its benevolence. Its puppeteering of the media and the internet gives it an absolute kingmaker role in the celebrity world, too, a service it can offer at a price — total adherence to its views.
Compounding the problem are Taipei-based media companies that may be entwined with Middle Kingdom interests, and a Taiwanese national framework for the arts and sports industries that some see as underwhelming. Even for stars who are not willing to go quite so far as trumpeting forced labor, silence on issues that would anger Beijing is therefore the norm.
From this point of view, Mayday could have been seen as a prime target. After 26 years of songwriting, the band has had the kind of career that attracts fans across age groups, making it an exceptional agent for an influence campaign, and its popularity among Chinese audiences has created a natural hold for Beijing authorities and state-led PR teams to exploit.
However, China might have pushed the envelope too far on this occasion, especially so close to election day. If perceptions of the Mayday incident are accurate and Beijing is truly retaliating against the band for upending its propaganda ploys, its dismal and ironic attempts at electoral interference by ventriloquy have been shown up in a manner that intricately exposes precisely why Taiwan would be silly to vote for any politician susceptible to subordination to the Chinese Communist Party.
Currently, as embodied by Mayday and Ashin, opinions cannot truly be forced on any Taiwanese person by any government, and people remain safe to express their thoughts even when they differ from political power holders, principles that show signs of moving Taiwan’s entire political spectrum further from Beijing than ever. Furthermore, if the latter is so aggressive in conforming people to its will when it is not in control of Taiwan, things are likely to be very much worse if it ever does achieve significant power.
Indeed, it will not escape the attention of many going to the ballot box in a few days’ time that, while China professes to be investigating Mayday for lip-synching, it in fact wishes the whole of Taiwan to mime the words to its song sheet in time with its tune. Like their favorite rock band, voters might not be quite so acquiescent as it hopes.
Leave a Reply