Why China’s Rock Music Scene Isn’t Bothered by a Troublesome Textbook

“That’s just crazy. Crazier than you can imagine,” said Yang Haisong, one of China’s most revered indie rockers. He was reacting to recent news about a university textbook degrading the internet, pop music, and his chosen genre of rock n’ roll as supposed dangerous Western traps that could spark a “color revolution” among the youth of China.

The South China Morning Post reported on September 4 that the textbook was published for the new school year. Titled “National Security Education Readier for College Students,” it “will be used in the foundational course on national security education in universities.” Among the international outlets that jumped on the story: The Christian Science Monitor, which published an opinion column titled “Why China’s rock music is here to stay.” It summed up the four decades that Chinese rock blossomed in the underground despite looming censorship and harsh consequences from a regime notoriously intolerant of descent.

None of that coverage, however, included quotes from the very musicians accused of creating purportedly destabilizing and revolutionary rock music. And the news was by no means making waves in China’s music scenes.

Yang – the famously animated singer for the brainy yet heartfelt Nanjing post punk band P.K. 14 – admitted that he hadn’t even heard about the textbook hubbub before The Diplomat reached him for comment. However, he did sound aghast when discussing it, calling the fact that this is being taught to university students “terrible.”

“They are judging for the students,” Yang said. “You should let them decide for themselves.”

Higher Education Press (HEP), the publisher of the textbook, did not respond to The Diplomat’s request for comment.

David Moser, an associate professor at Beijing Capital Normal University who has worked as an academic in China for nearly 40 years, says the phrasing in that textbook reminds him of slogans from when he first arrived, back when “‘spiritual pollution’ was the bête noire of the day.” He pointed out the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) hasn’t merely relaxed its outlook on everything from rock music to rap in many of the ensuing years – the government has even used hip-hop in official propaganda videos.

“I think that phrase in the textbook may have been inserted by someone in an official position who feels nervous about the attitude to be taken toward rock music,” Moser speculated. “Everyone at every level is feeling a bit nervous these days about the increasing limits on freedom of expression, and the party’s agenda to sanitize mass media content to better accord with the official moral stances… [so] it’s possible that the government would suddenly crack down on rock music, especially if there occurred some scandal or some offensive meme that would attract the attention of the authorities.”

Ominous as all that may sound, and opposed as he may be on principle, Yang isn’t worried about the textbook’s teachings. After all, he and his indie rock peers have already dealt with so many other hurdles – from rigid censorship regulations that make bands like his submit lyrics for government review, to ruthless re-zoning that forced many of the underground venues who championed such acts to shut down. Nevertheless, such bands aren’t merely surviving; they are now thriving like never before.

Helen Feng is the singer for the sleek synth band Nova Heart, a late 2000s contemporary of P.K. 14. Like Yang’s band, Nova Heart returned to the road this past summer after a long hiatus only to see their biggest crowds yet. That enthusiasm is due to an indie rock renaissance sparked by a viral battle of the bands web series, “The Big Band” (乐队的夏天 ), that saw acts like Nova Heart vault beyond their humble underground roots to compete and perform for a huge viewership from a new generation.

Connecting with these young fans while touring mid-sized theaters with reformed Nova Heart this summer – as opposed to the circuit of underground dives from their heyday, which operated in legal gray zones – made Feng optimistic about the future, to say the least.

When it comes to this textbook’s anti-rock rhetoric, Feng said: “One thing I know about most educated youth in China is they are instantly cautious of information fed to them. Regardless of the source. The more you force it down their throats, the more you are inviting their mockery. And like most young people in the world, warnings are like giant invitation neon signs.”

Feng continued: “There’s always someone saying something or other because it sounds good for a soundbite. Everywhere in the world, you have right-wing pundits and left-wing pundits. And in China you have people who sit on the bench, and people who are claiming to be experts who are full of shit. And that’s the same everywhere in the world.”

There aren’t only international parallels to be drawn, but also historical ones. “When they filmed Elvis from the waist up, it didn’t exactly end rock n’ roll,” said Eric de Fontenay, founder of Beijing- and New York-based music touring and promotion agency MusicDish (独立小炒). He was referencing the prudish way “The Ed Sullivan Show” on TV tried to hide the King’s then-controversial hip shaking. Whether in the 1950s of now, young music fans can’t be held back, de Fontenay insisted.

He added that, at the very least, these textbook propagandists should try harder. It’s “meaningless mostly because the textbook is for college students. If you saw something maybe more widespread among younger students, it might be a different story,” said de Fontenay – a point that might help allay Yang’s concerns about elders judging for youth.

But what of China watchers eager to parse political meaning from any official publishing, be it speeches, state media or school curricula? Moser had this to say: “Textbooks don't necessarily help in reading the party tea leaves. But they can reflect the level of caution among the publishers of textbooks. There is so much uncertainty now about where the boundaries lie, and many apparatchiks will err on the side of caution.”

For now, de Fontenay is less worried about this textbook being a preface for immediate and widespread crackdowns. Instead he’s irked by how such official messaging can be misconstrued by international media. Extreme as such anti-rock rhetoric sounds to onlooking commentators on the outside, those from or living long-term in China quickly grow testy of coverage from abroad lacking the context found on the ground.

“It's looking at a point of data without looking at an entire data set,” said de Fontenay, before recalling prior click-bait foreign coverage of restrictions on certain music genres and fashion styles. “Remember when you had the BBC and The Financial Times reporting on the banning of rap or tattoos? Yeah. What did that amount to? Of course on state TV people couldn’t show their tattoos after that, and some people applying for jobs in certain government bureaus had to be more discreet. But walk through the streets of Beijing or any major Chinese city – just about every young person has a visible tattoo. It’s totally mainstream.”

Feng also insisted that more nuance is desperately needed in such coverage. She cited everything from bird’s eye reporting on pop culture restrictions (needling the Christian Science Monitor’s piece about the textbook, and much of its journalism in general), to enthused Forbes cover stories about tech entrepreneurs like Jack Ma who were subsequently subsumed by regulators, as evidence of the rampant short sightedness in international reporting on China. Feng is well versed in both media beats as a singer in a major Chinese band and a former university student who majored in economics.

“If you’re a China watcher, or anyone in China for a long enough amount of time, you know nothing is fixed. There is not one party line that isn’t being shifted or adapted constantly. Things stick for a bit, then they change up again based on the pragmatism of the time,” she explained. “And sometimes it seems like ‘Oh this is nonsense’ and it lasts a little longer than is pragmatic, but eventually it drops off… In the end, I think pragmatism wins out over buffoonery. It just takes a little bit of time. Eventually it will adjust. Hopefully you just don’t get crushed in the in-between.”

Other China music insiders have similarly nuanced takes, though one is by turns even more frank. Ai Jing, a concert booker in Beijing who runs the agency Haze Sounds, said bluntly: “I partly agree with what the textbook says. The Chinese government does see the rock scene, or in general any youth culture, as a threat.”

However, that is by no means the end of the story for Ai, who revealed another important layer that too often goes overlooked by reporters. “In general the central government is not encouraging. But the provincial and city level can be, because it is a good chance to pull up their economy.”

This became clear to him when the relatively small, unknown city of Zibo hosted one of China’s first music festivals after COVID-19 broke out, drawing tens of thousands of attendees starved for live music after the bigger cities they lived in were addled by pandemic restrictions. That, along with the battle of the bands web series “The Big Band” making indie rock mainstream, and more foreign acts returning to perform in China after a dearth during the pandemic, all make Ai optimistic about rock n’ roll in China, despite some naysaying officials and inflammatory propaganda.

As Ai concluded: “For me as a person working in this industry, I think the industry is promising. We will have problems along the way, but it's promising.”