McArthur|120 Songs Blacklisted In China

The name of the issuing body has been omitted to protect the source.

China has ordered 120 songs to be pulled from the Internet, including tracks titled “Don’t Want to Go to School” and “All Must Die” because they promoted sex, violence or “incited law-breaking”, authorities said.

The Ministry of Culture in China said the 120 songs “trumpeted obscenity, violence, crime or harmed social morality” according to a statement they released.

The ministry announced that if website administrators are caught not removing these songs, they will have to face “severe punishment”.

Numerous banned songs on the list were by unknown local hip-hop singers and bands, but some were by relatively popular artists such as Taiwanese singer Chang Csun Yuk and actor Stanley Huang. [Source]. A number of those songs contain content of a sexual nature, such as the romantic promise of rapper Chang Csun Yuk to take an accidentally pregnant Taiwanese girl “to a gynecology department” in the song “I Love Taiwanese Girls“. “Thumbs up! Such bad taste and vulgarity”. One such program, 2011’s If You Are the One, attracted government scorn for featuring women looking to marry rich men and valuing material possessions like cars and jewelry.

The blacklist will serve as a reference for online administrators to ensure their content is legal, said Liu Qiang, a ministry official in charge of the cultural market, adding that the list will be regularly updated.

BuzzFeed’s Beimeng Fu reports that the blacklist itself has lent numerous songs unintended publicity, and notes that many banned song lyrics are still widely available online.

While others joked that it had inadvertently brought more attention to the songs. (Thanks to China’s cutting-edge piracy industry, we are confident that it won’t take too long for hardcore Chinese music fans to put them back up.).

And what’s on this list of songs, you may well wonder.