From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   Cultural Crackdown in China Shuts Comedy and Music Shows   
   By Vivian Wang, May 24, 2023, NY Times   
      
   The cancellations rippled across the country: A Japanese choral band touring   
   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 supposed to begin — with virtually no   
   explanation.   
      
   Just before the performances were scrapped, the authorities in Beijing had   
   fined a Chinese comedy studio around $2 million, after one of its stand-up   
   performers was accused of insulting the Chinese military in a joke; the police   
   in northern China also    
   detained a woman who had defended the comedian online.   
      
   Those penalties, and the sudden spate 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 arts and culture a central arena   
   for ideological    
   crackdowns, demanding that artists align their creative ambitions with Chinese   
   Communist Party goals and promote a nationalist vision of Chinese identity.   
   Performers 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 anniversary, reminding staff to “adhere to the correct political   
   orientation.”   
      
   Mr. Xi’s emphasis on the arts is also part of a broader preoccupation with   
   national security and eliminating supposedly malign foreign influence. The   
   authorities in recent weeks have raided the corporate offices of several   
   Western consulting or    
   advisory companies based in China, and broadened the range of behaviors   
   covered under counterespionage laws.   
      
   Many of the canceled events were supposed to feature foreign performers or   
   speakers.   
      
   It was only to be expected that Beijing would also look to the cultural realm,   
   as its deteriorating relationship with the West has made it more fixated on   
   maintaining its grip on power at home, said Zhang Ping, a former journalist   
   and political    
   commentator in China who now lives in Germany.   
      
   “One way to respond to anxiety about power is to increase control,” said   
   Mr. Zhang, who writes under the pen name Chang Ping. “Dictatorships have   
   always sought to control people’s entertainment, speech, laughter and   
   tears.”   
      
   While the party has long regulated the arts — one target of the Cultural   
   Revolution was creative work deemed insufficiently “revolutionary” — the   
   intensity has increased sharply under Mr. Xi. In 2021, a state-backed   
   performing arts association    
   published a list of morality guidelines for artists, which included   
   prescriptions for patriotism. The same year, the government banned “sissy   
   men” from appearing on television, accusing them of weakening the nation.   
      
   Officials have also taken notice of stand-up comedy, which has gained   
   popularity in recent years and offered a rare medium for limited barbs about   
   life in contemporary China. The government fined a comedian for making jokes   
   about last year’s    
   coronavirus lockdown in Shanghai. People’s Daily, the Communist Party   
   mouthpiece, published a commentary in November that said jokes had to 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 from “talk show.”   
      
   The recent crackdown began after an anonymous social media user complained   
   about a set that a popular stand-up comedian, Li Haoshi, performed in Beijing   
   on May 13. Mr. Li, who uses the stage name House, had said that 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 the authorities quickly   
   piled on. In addition to fining Xiaoguo Culture Media, the firm that manages   
   Mr. Li, the authorities — who said the joke had a “vile 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 penalty being announced on Wednesday, organizers of   
   stand-up shows 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 Britain-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 fallout was not limited to comedy. Scheduled musical   
   performances began disappearing, too, including a stop in southern China by a   
   Shanghai rock band that includes foreign members, a Beijing folk music   
   festival and several jazz    
   performances, and a Canadian rapper’s show in the southern city of Changsha.   
      
   The frontman of a Buddhist-influenced Japanese chorus group, Kissaquo, said   
   last Wednesday that his concert that night in the southern city of Guangzhou   
   had been canceled. Hours later, the frontman, Kanho Yakushiji, said a   
   performance in Hangzhou, in    
   eastern China, had been canceled, too. And the next day, he announced that   
   Beijing and Shanghai shows had also been called off.   
      
   “I was writing a set list, but I stopped in the middle,” Mr. Yakushiji,   
   whose management company did not respond to a request for comment, wrote on   
   his Facebook page. “I still don’t understand what the meaning of all this   
   is. I have nothing but    
   regrets.”   
      
   Organizers’ announcements for nearly all of the canceled events cited   
   “force majeure,” a term that means circumstances beyond one’s control   
   — and, in China, has often been used as shorthand for government pressure.   
      
   Stand-up show organizers did not return requests for comment. Several   
   organizers of canceled musical performances denied that they had been told not   
   to feature foreigners. An employee at a Nanjing music venue that canceled a   
   tribute to the Japanese    
   composer Ryuichi Sakamoto said not enough tickets had been sold.   
      
   Some of the foreign musicians whose shows were canceled have since been able   
   to perform in other cities or at other venues.   
      
      
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