China’s Ministry of Culture has blacklisted 120 songs that it believes “trumpeted obscenity, violence, crime or harmed social morality,” and ordered website administrators to take them off their sites.
With titles like “Beijing Hooligans, Don’t Want to Go to School” and “Suicide Diary,” the banned songs had “severely problematic content” and violated cultural management regulations, the Xinhua news agency reported.
Included in the list of blacklisted songs was Taiwanese singer Chang Csun-yuk‘s song”Fart,” which includes the line “There are some people in the world who like farting while doing nothing,” and “I Love Taiwanese Girls,” in which he sings that he will take them to a gynecologist if they get pregnant and urges them to take off their clothes, the South China Morning Post reported.
The culture ministry said no work unit or individual was allowed to stream these songs, and anyone doing so would face unspecified “severe punishment”.
While many online music fans complained about the latest round of restrictions they have to deal with, some Internet users thanked the Culture Ministry for giving them a new playlist with which to work.
Other artists on the blacklist include Yinsaner (In Three) a three-man underground hip-hop crew in Beijing that sings in Chinese and takes aim at social trends and groups. Seventeen songs by the group have been banned.
Others include Chinese-language songs by Taiwanese actor Stanley Huang.
Liu Qiang, a ministry official in charge of the cultural market, said the blacklist would serve as a reference for online administrators to ensure their content is legal, and the ministry planned to update the list regularly.
The Chinese government is currently waging a moral crusade, initiated by President Xi Jinping, which has seen some high-profile drugs and prostitution arrests in the entertainment industry.
While censors tightly control content that they believes undermines social stability, it’s often a difficult task because of the sheer scale of China.
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