BEIJING — With their control over newspapers, television, magazines and the Internet secure, censors in China are now turning their attention to the dim recesses of the nation's karaoke parlors.
The state-run Beijing News reported Wednesday that the Ministry of Culture has issued new rules to prevent "unhealthy" songs from ringing forth in the singalong bars, which are so popular here that people joke that overseas, Chinese join church choirs only because they miss karaoke so much.
Most Chinese tunes are pretty tame by U.S. standards. So what songs might not pass Beijing's crooners cut? A "Top 10 Unclean Song Contest" held a few years ago by Heaven and Earth People magazine might provide some clues.
Among those judged the most unclean was "Boat Tracker's Love," condemned for lyrics such as "I can't wait for the sun to set so you can kiss me as much as you want to." Those less inclined toward maritime themes might consider "Office" by Xuecun, with the line, "We spend a lot of nights together as you cheat on your husband by telling him you're working overtime."
Song Zhu, an 18-year-old student who enjoys belting out tunes by Taiwanese rap singer Zhou Jielun, thought the proposed rules sounded a bit intrusive.
"It would really bother me if I wasn't allowed to sing a song I liked," Song said as she stood in front of the Cash Box karaoke parlor in Beijing, fiddling with her cellphone. "I'd be especially peeved if I'd practiced and got really good at it."
The government has picked three mid-size cities, Wuhan, Zhengzhou and Qingdao, to test the new program under which member businesses will choose songs from a central database. The program, which the government says also will help safeguard intellectual property rights, may go nationwide if implementation in the test cities proves successful.
"All the songs in the database for use by karaoke parlors and consumers need to be censored" to ensure their content meets government standards, Liang Gang, director of the Cultural Market Development Center of the Ministry of Culture, told state media.
China's monopoly Communist Party faces a challenge serenading its youngest charges, many of whom were weaned on a diet of pop music, global fashion and consumer choice and view the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown as ancient history.
