Reuters points out the difficulties in Taiwan Pop Culture Invades China:
TAIPEI (Reuters) - Lu Jing, a 21-year-old stowaway from China, paid 20,000 yuan (US$2,400) and hid for three days in a flimsy Taiwan-bound fishing boat before being caught by the island's coast guard in March.And I thought pop culture was just responsible for the impending collapse of Western Civilization. Official Meteor Garden web site:But Lu, from the southeastern city of Fuzhou, was no defector from communist rule to freewheeling democratic Taiwan.
She told astonished Taiwan interrogators that she wanted to steal into the island to get a glimpse of F4 (Flower Four), a Taiwan boy band that has swept fans in China -- and indeed much of the rest of the Chinese-speaking world -- off their feet.
China's cultural Czars had pulled "Meteor Garden," a hit soap opera featuring the band's four tall and handsome heart throbs, off the air, fearing that the decadent lifestyle portrayed in the drama would corrupt the minds of the masses.
Taiwan pop culture has permeated China since the world's most populous nation opened up in the late 1970s. But China's cultural mandarins remain on guard against what they call "peaceful evolution" -- the gradual undermining of communism by Western cultural, commercial and ideological values.
"Orthodox Communist Party leaders see pop culture as a kind of threat," said Hou Dejian, a Taiwan composer-singer who was welcomed by China with open arms when he defected in 1983.
"Pop culture is their number one enemy," said Hou, whom China deported for taking part in a hunger strike days before the Chinese army crushed the 1989 student-led demonstrations for democracy centered on Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
"They are convinced there was a direct relationship between pop culture and the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe," Hou, now 45, added.
Despite the ban, millions in China have seen "Meteor Garden," adapted from the Japanese comic book "Hana Yori Dango" -- meaning Boys Prettier than Flowers -- about friendship and love.
