IntroductionFootnote 1
The writer Sun Shengqi (孙盛起) vividly recalls that, in the late 1970s, when he was a senior high school student, he clutched a small tape recorder under his quilt, secretly listening to Teresa Teng (Deng Lijun, 邓丽君)’s music for the first time. At that time, Teng’s music was officially banned by the government, and he did not dare to listen to it publicly:
Having grown up surrounded by model operas and “red songs” – most of which had to be shouted, in the so-called “sonorous and powerful” style – when Teresa Teng’s gentle and beautiful voice suddenly rang in my ears, I was instantly intoxicated. To me, it was nothing short of celestial music! For the first time in my life, I realized: a song could be sung like this, lyrics could be written like this! That enthralling, soul-stirring feeling was truly beyond description.Footnote 2
Political scientist James Scott proposes the concept of “everyday resistance” in Weapons of the Weak. It refers to the daily form of Malaysian peasants’ resistance, which avoids symbolic public clashes with the authority, including stealing, pretending ignorance, and defamation.Footnote 3 Drawing upon Scott’s framework, this article explores how seemingly mundane behaviors, like secretly listening to prohibited music, functioned as subtle deviations from Party ideology and a form of everyday resistance in both Maoist and post-Maoist China. For ordinary people living under Communist rule, these subtle, private acts often became the most practical way of expressing dissatisfaction. Sun Shengqi’s recollection of furtively listening to Teresa Teng’s voice in the late 1970s, illustrates how individuals, fearful of official bans, nonetheless chose to transgress regulations. Literary scholar Lin Pei-yin observes that Teng’s popularity demonstrated the difficulty of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) imposing a fully “‘hegemonic’ reception of popular music on the masses.”Footnote 4 Building on Lin’s insight, this article argues that the act of listening to music outside the officially sanctioned repertoire constituted an indirect form of resistance to the CCP’s cultural hegemony.
Although music has commonly been seen as a form of entertainment, it has been imbued with specific political connotations within the Chinese political context. The primary manifestation is music’s co-optation as a propaganda tool. In 1942, Mao Zedong (毛泽东, 1893-1976) made a speech “Opposing Stereotyped Party Writing” (反对党八股) on the CCP artistic work in Yan’an, asking, “Who are our propagandists? They include not only teachers, journalists, writers, and artists, but all our cadres. Whenever a man speaks to others, he is doing propaganda work.”Footnote 5 Mao’s speech established the concept of “communication is propaganda” (传播即宣传) within the CCP, which considers publicity, press and other mass communication, (such as) education, literature, art, entertainment, architecture, and other acts involving the dissemination of symbols as organic components of propaganda, so all of them must convey a unified ideological message.Footnote 6 Music, with no exception, became the medium of CCP propaganda.
In CCP terminology, “popular songs” (流行歌曲) are referred to as “mass songs” (群众歌曲) or “public songs” (大众歌曲), which are music created for and adored by the masses. In actuality, the creation of these songs was heavily dominated by the CCP cultural workers, and these songs were deployed to propagate the party’s ideology. Since the 1930s, the CCP has argued that only songs that are patriotic, significant to society as a whole, and capable of inspiring the populace – such as composer Nie Er (聂耳, 1912-1935)’s “March of the Volunteers” (义勇军进行曲), which became China’s national anthem – should be promoted, popularized, and performed widely.Footnote 7 Before the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was founded, the CCP had actively motivated songwriters to write war songs to inspire people to fight their enemies, including both Japanese invaders and the Kuomintang (KMT). After analyzing these war songs, historian Hung Chang-tai noted that CCP artists employed songs to invent emblems of socialism and the imaginations of a future society, revealing the strong relationship between music and CCP politics. In contrast to the conventional Marxist view, which holds that music is simply a manifestation of the frameworks of society and the economy, Hung contends that songs are an active force in forming people’s minds and emotions as well as a determinant of actual history.Footnote 8
After the PRC was established in 1949, China transformed into a “Propaganda State” (宣传国家) as defined by Hung, where propaganda became a tool used by Communist governments to motivate the populace for political purposes as well as to convince and coerce them.Footnote 9 While Hung initially characterized Maoist China as a “Propaganda State” marked by top-down control, his more recent research has complicated this view, revealing a significant degree of complexity, inventiveness, and – above all – adaptability in cultural governance.Footnote 10 Through an in-depth analysis of municipal-level cultural institutions, Hung shows that high-level directives, often formulated in broad or ambiguous terms, were not consistently implemented at the local level. However, cultural centers frequently adapted these directives to local circumstances, demonstrating considerable creativity and pragmatism in responding to unexpected challenges.Footnote 11 Moreover, Hung highlights several forms of resistance, from both cultural workers embedded within the official system and rural audiences. Many artists and writers showed little enthusiasm for being sent to the countryside, and peasants often viewed the interventions of cultural centers as disruptive or intrusive.Footnote 12 Hung’s recent work thus refines the “Propaganda State” model by emphasizing the partial autonomy of local actors and the ambivalence or resistance expressed by both cultural agents and their audiences in the early PRC’s cultural campaigns.
Beyond Hung’s revision of the propaganda model, Perry Link’s work on literary culture under socialism further illustrates the richness and diversity of cultural production even within the constraints of Party control. Link points out that dissident voices often relied on indirection and ambiguity to express subversive ideas, and that such forms of covert dissent were a regular feature of life under Mao.Footnote 13 He also examines the phenomenon of “hand-copied volumes” (手抄本), which circulated unofficially throughout Maoist China – particularly during the Cultural Revolution – featuring fiction on romance, espionage, crime, and even satirical portrayals of political leaders. These texts, often written and read by educated youth sent to the countryside, spread largely because rural areas had looser surveillance than urban centers. Despite official efforts to suppress this activity in the 1970s, their improvised and decentralized nature made them difficult to eliminate.Footnote 14 This discussion reveals the agency of both cultural producers and grassroots readers.
Similarly, cultural historian Paul Clark has documented instances of musical innovation and experimentation during the Cultural Revolution, despite the state’s ideological rigidity. Red Guards and sent-down youth reproduced urban cultural forms in rural areas, inventing novel performance styles that blended Chinese and foreign elements, often without direct Party oversight. By the mid-1970s, even officially sanctioned cultural venues exhibited notable levels of creativity, particularly in music and dance.Footnote 15 Some artists also expressed a continued desire for traditional works, and cultural officials became increasingly uncertain about how audiences would respond to new, ideologically driven productions.Footnote 16 Moreover, as Barbara Mittler argues, the effectiveness of the CCP’s propaganda during the Cultural Revolution lay in its ability to present itself as a recurrent and dominant element within a spectrum of cultural expression that, while officially restricted, informally allowed for considerable variety.Footnote 17 These examples demonstrate that cultural production in Maoist China was far from monolithic. Instead, it was marked by ideological negotiation, creative adaptation, and popular agency, reflecting a dynamic cultural landscape in which both producers and audiences played active roles.
Building on previous studies of cultural life in socialist China, this research turns to the realm of music to explore the dynamic relationship between cultural consumption and everyday experience in Maoist China and after. Rather than viewing audiences as passive recipients of state-directed messages, it emphasizes the agency of music consumers and the complex ways in which listening practices could reflect ambivalence, negotiation, and even subtle resistance. As political scientist Christian Sorace has argued, “The Party’s relationship with society is negotiated in mundane spaces,”Footnote 18 and music – circulated in both official and unofficial channels – was one such space of everyday negotiation. The cultural tensions between officially sanctioned red music and unofficial or banned yellow music can thus be understood not simply as a matter of cultural policy, but as a microcosm of broader struggles over meaning, taste, and control.
Moreover, rather than viewing Maoist China and the Reform era as sharply distinct historical phases, Timothy Cheek’s concept of a “directed public sphere” helps us understand the continuities in the CCP’s approach to cultural governance. Cheek argues that from Mao’s era to the post-Mao period, the CCP consistently employed propaganda to morally and politically educate citizens, thus retaining core doctrinal assumptions despite changing methods and contexts.Footnote 19 Indeed, as demonstrated by the evolving official stance toward Teresa Teng’s music in the 1980s, the CCP did not abandon its ideological control but adjusted its approach to accommodate popular tastes and new political goals. This nuanced continuity underscores how cultural policy in China evolved through negotiation rather than abrupt rupture, shaped by ongoing interplay between inherited Maoist practices and emerging reform-era conditions.
Drawing on sources such as the People’s Daily (人民日报), archival documents housed in Zhejiang Provincial Archives and Shanghai Municipal ArchivesFootnote 20 , official internal bulletins such as Guangbo dongtai (广播动态), autobiographies, and oral history accounts, this article investigates how music consumption became a site of cultural negotiation in Maoist China and after, revealing the shifting boundaries between state control and popular experience in everyday life. While not all acts of listening can be understood as resistance in a strict sense, this study explores how certain listening practices – especially those occurring beyond officially sanctioned frameworks – may have created space for alternative affective experiences and quiet forms of personal distinction, if not dissent.
The shifting boundaries of yellow music: ideological constructions and cultural governance in the PRC
When the PRC was established in 1949, a diverse array of music existed within Chinese society. The majority of songs played and sung in public by the CCP were marching songs glorifying party leaders and revolutionaries, songs of praise to collectivism, which rarely involved individual emotions. Counterparts of these revolutionary and red songs (革命红色歌曲), such as songs with gentle melodies, lyrics lacking revolutionary spirit or collectivist ideals, associated with the bourgeoisie, and portrayals of the love between men and women, were all deemed “decadent music” (靡靡之音) by the Communist Party. As a result, most of the old lyrical songs (抒情歌曲) from before 1949 were defined by the Chinese Communist authorities as yellow songs.Footnote 21
In fact, the term “yellow music” predated the founding of the PRC and first emerged in Republican China. Around 1945, the Chinese term huangse (黄色), meaning “yellow,” was adopted in the music industry as a metaphor for eroticism or obscenity. It reflected growing concerns about the perceived moral decline associated with popular entertainment, especially in the aftermath of the Japanese occupation.Footnote 22 Criticism of “yellow music” had already taken shape in the 1930s, particularly in response to the development of a blended musical genre known as “modern songs” (时代曲) – a fusion of Chinese folk melodies, Hollywood film music, and American jazz. This genre is most closely associated with Li Jinhui (黎锦晖), a pioneering composer and educator whose work became emblematic of Shanghai’s commercial music scene. Li’s music, deeply connected with the broader urban media culture of the time, was frequently denounced by critics as “yellow” or “pornographic” (黄色音乐), especially by leftist cultural commentators.
As Andrew F. Jones notes, the rise of both “yellow music” and leftist “mass songs” (群众歌曲) in the decade prior to the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War reflected competing visions of musical modernity in the urban media market. While mass songs were promoted as vehicles for nationalist mobilization and ideological education, “yellow music” was condemned as decadent and complicit with capitalist and colonial cultural influences.Footnote 23 When the Pacific War broke out in 1941, the Japanese military assumed control over the foreign concessions in Shanghai, thereby governing the entire city until Japan’s surrender in 1945. During this period, the Japanese army gradually monopolized the production and dissemination of popular music. In contrast to anti-Japanese nationalist songs that emphasized Chinese suffering, much of the popular music produced in this specific historical context depicted Shanghai as a serene space for singing and dancing, obscuring the harsh realities of war. Following its return of the national capital to Nanjing in 1947, the KMT government, as part of its governing objective of “rejuvenating rituals and music,” issued directives banning “yellow music.”Footnote 24
Furthermore, Jones further emphasizes that the emergence of “yellow music” in China must be understood in the context of transnational flows: “the trans-Pacific circulation of gramophone records and musicians that enabled its presence there in the first place.”Footnote 25 Thus, the categorization of “yellow music” was shaped as much by global cultural exchange and colonial modernity as by domestic political discourse, long before the CCP institutionalized its own critiques of musical taste. Criticism of “yellow music” was, therefore, not unique to the CCP; it was also shared by earlier wartime leftist intellectuals and the KMT’s postwar cultural policymakers, even if their understandings of the term were not entirely the same. In the following analysis, I examine the evolving discourse surrounding yellow music in the PRC, specifically focusing on those forms of music the CCP deemed ideologically problematic at various times. To differentiate this historical, context-specific usage from my analytical category of “yellow music,” I will use unquoted yellow music when referring to the CCP’s discourse.
In the CCP’s discourse, the category of yellow music shifted in response to the changing political climate of the PRC. In the early years of the PRC, in addition to red songs and yellow songs, Chinese people also appreciated and performed folk songs (民歌). Folk songs, in the Chinese context, were composed and sung by the working class,Footnote 26 particularly farmers, reflecting their life and labor experiences. As these songs resonated with the socialist ideology, emphasizing the value and respect for labor, the CCP presented folk songs as a medium to express the liberated glory of their new socialist way of life.Footnote 27 The Party motivated peasants to create new folk songs with their own lyrics,Footnote 28 and enlisted communist artists to craft folk songs delivering socialist ideals and nationalist sentiments.Footnote 29 This effectively turned folk songs into another form of red songs. However, as the CCP initiated more political campaigns and imposed stricter requirements on songs, many old folk songs were also labeled as yellow music. For instance, the song “Fisherwoman” (渔家女), which depicted the hard life of a fisherwoman, faced criticism and was considered yellow music, partly because its composer was tagged as a rightist during the Anti-Rightist Campaign (反右运动).Footnote 30
Furthermore, the category of yellow music itself warrants critical investigation as a historically shifting construct, rather than being taken as a fixed analytical lens. During the Anti-Rightist Campaign of the late 1950s, the rhetorical opposition between yellow music and red music became increasingly prominent, and the scope of what was condemned as yellow music expanded considerably. Critics moved beyond earlier associations with obscenity and eroticism, redefining yellow music as embodying hedonism, carnality, anti-patriotism, and even sarcasm toward the working class.Footnote 31 As the Anti-Rightist Campaign intensified, this discursive expansion reflected a broader effort to suppress personal emotional expression, especially as public ownership became subsumed within a state-dominated system following the Reform of the Three Industries (三大改造). Musical genres that mediated personal sentiment, particularly those categorized as yellow music, were targeted for elimination, while collective-oriented “mass songs” and “revolutionary songs” were politically legitimized.Footnote 32 Music scholar Zhang Qian has noted that the Cold War-era ideological divide between socialism and capitalism contributed to a structural binary that shaped musical esthetics and institutional practices in China. The so-called “two-line struggle” – with yellow music representing the capitalist line and red music representing the proletarian line – was central to critiques of musical taste.Footnote 33 Critics commonly employed metaphors such as “poisonous weeds” (毒草), “opium” (福寿膏), and other narcotics to describe the seductive yet dangerous effects of yellow music, reinforcing its symbolic illegitimacy through analogies to addiction and moral decay.Footnote 34 The binary metaphors of “fragrant flowers/poisonous weeds” (香花／毒草), widely used in Maoist cultural discourse, carried over into the early 1980s, even as the category of yellow music evolved in response to shifting political and international contexts.
Meanwhile, as the political climate in China grew increasingly radical, foreign music – which had initially been accessible and enjoyed by Chinese audiences – also came to be classified as yellow music. During the early period of the PRC, foreign music was allowed to be played in public, with Soviet songs gaining significant popularity as China modeled itself after the Soviet Union.Footnote 35 Chinese lyrics were added to Russian songs,Footnote 36 and these songs instilled a sense of patriotism among the masses. With the founding of the PRC, the early Soviet songs were a major source of patriotism for the masses. Among the popular Soviet songs in China were those about defending the motherland, guarding the borders, and thinking of family and friends. They were especially popular because the themes addressed both the individual and the collective.Footnote 37 Interestingly, despite the general view of American music as “sappy” and “decadent,” African American spiritual songs and certain Broadway musicals, were introduced with the specific aim of condemning capitalist oppression and exploitation.Footnote 38 As the CCP focused more on national independence movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America in the mid-1950s, many anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist songs were imported from these regions.Footnote 39 However, as the Sino-Soviet relationship deteriorated in the 1960s, Soviet songs lost favor. During the Cultural Revolution, as the political situation became more and more radical, the CCP officially criticized foreign songs. The CCP claimed that there were only a handful of “good revolutionary songs” in foreign music, such as the “The Internationale,” while the rest were bourgeois songs that glorified love, religious sentiments, and individualism.Footnote 40 Almost all foreign songs in the official media were labeled as “reactionary” (反革命), “yellow” (黄色), and “feudalistic, capitalistic, revisionist” (封资修) and disappeared from official media.Footnote 41
In the early years of the PRC, Chinese people engaged with a musically diverse soundscape that included revolutionary songs, traditional folk music, and select forms of foreign music. Although officially banned, so-called yellow songs – often associated with sentimentality, individualism, or bourgeois esthetics – circulated covertly and remained part of everyday listening practices. Amid growing ideological rigidity, particularly during the 1950s and 1960s, the boundaries of what constituted yellow music expanded significantly. Traditional folk songs and previously tolerated foreign music were gradually reclassified as ideologically suspect, unless they were explicitly rewritten or composed to glorify revolution. Only “new folk songs” and foreign works that unambiguously supported socialist ideals were permitted in public circulation. Over time, the musical repertoire available to the public became sharply polarized, with songs falling into two official categories: revolutionary music and yellow music. The state’s increasing intervention in cultural discourse was marked by linguistic shifts in official media, including the routine insertion of the term “revolutionary” before “songs” beginning in 1965,Footnote 42 an act that both rebranded acceptable musical forms and reinforced the exclusion of all others.
Following Mao’s death and changes in Party leadership, the boundaries of yellow music fluctuated in the reform era. In the early 1980s, as China began to implement its “reform and opening up” (改革开放) policy, popular music from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the West was initially swept into the expanded category of yellow music, particularly amid rising cultural exchange alongside economic trade. Zhang Qian insightfully observes that the expansion of the yellow music category in Maoist China was sustained by a Cold War-era mindset rooted in an imagined ideological enemy,Footnote 43 a mindset that persisted even after the domestic political climate began to shift. This mentality was reflected in the continued use of oppositional metaphors, including the “fragrant flowers/poisonous weeds” binary. In April 1980, the China Musicians’ Association convened the Fourth National Conference on Music Composition in Beijing, where popular songs represented by Teresa Teng, a Taiwanese pop icon, were publicly denounced as “decadent,” “yellow,” and as a “poisonous weeds” that could corrupt the revolutionary spirit of the masses with bourgeois ideology.Footnote 44 Teng’s music was accordingly blocked by the authorities in the early 1980s. However, a turning point occurred in February 1985, when Beijing Youth Daily (北京青年报), under the supervision of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Communist Youth League of China, published an interview with Teresa Teng.Footnote 45 It effectively marked the lifting of the ban and a shift toward a softer official stance. While the evolving reception of Teng and her music will be discussed in detail in later sections, it can be argued here that the fluctuating boundaries of yellow music reflected not only ideological and institutional changes, but also the Party’s persistent reliance on oppositional metaphors and the imagined enemy framework that had structured cultural policy since the Maoist period.
The dichotomy between the revolutionary songs promoted by officials and the so-called “decadent” music favored by the public has led to a cultural struggle between these two types of music in the public sphere. Christian Sorace examines a similar negotiation of power in his study of the struggles between villagers and the CCP over which plants to use for landscaping around homes during earthquake reconstruction in Sichuan Province. Sorace reveals that while some local authorities conceded to villagers’ preferences, in other areas, villagers lost these landscaping battles. Sorace argues that these interactions “are further evidence that the Party’s relationship with society is negotiated in mundane spaces.”Footnote 46 Echoing Sorace’s argument, the contest between red and yellow music reflects the ongoing, negotiated, and evolving power dynamics between the Chinese people and the CCP government.
Music as everyday resistance: refusal of revolutionary songs and circulation of yellow songs
Refusal of revolutionary songs
Since the early PRC period, the CCP has consistently promoted revolutionary songs as a means of engaging its populace. In parallel with CCP propaganda, it is apparent that grassroots resistance was also taking place. Despite the official ban on yellow songs, they were still played in public. Some readers wrote to the People’s Daily to report that pornographic songs were used by several city workers’ clubs as an accompaniment to their dances.Footnote 47 Moreover, American jazz music and recordings of decadent music were frequently played in the background at social dances held in government offices, organizations, and educational institutions.Footnote 48 In addition, some solemn red songs had been distorted in music concerts.Footnote 49
Meanwhile, yellow music records continued to be sold by record companies in urban areas. For example, according to a 1954 directive issued by the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Cultural Affairs, apart from a small number of local opera records, the entire stock of old records from the Baisheng Records Company consisted of yellow music records and was deemed unfit for further sale.Footnote 50 An investigation revealed that the company’s business practices were “highly dishonest.” In 1953, to promote these records, it had posted large signs in its shop windows falsely labeling them as “Chinese Song and Dance Records” (中华歌曲唱片), in an attempt to pass them off as something else. Baisheng held the city’s largest stock of yellow music records, totaling around 3,000 discs. Moreover, in the Fuzhou Road area, many phonograph shops were still found to be selling such records.Footnote 51
At the same time, Chinese musicians were engaged in a heated debate over lyrical songs between 1953 and 1955. However, these discussions were stifled by the Chinese Musicians Association (中国音乐家协会), which prioritized the Party in music creation.Footnote 52 In 1956, the Hundred Flowers Campaign (百花齐放, 1956-1957) was launched, which supported writers and artists to create their work more freely and provided intellectuals with a platform to criticize the government, to foster the growth of culture, the arts, and society in China. As the political pressure lessened, pornographic songs resurfaced in public in numerous cities again.Footnote 53 Critiques published in the People’s Daily observed the popularity of those yellow songs:
Some construction sites and individual institutions and stores also used loudspeakers to broadcast yellow songs widely from morning to night. Even factories, government offices, and workers’ clubs played yellow songs and music to accompany dances. Surprisingly, some local radio stations also aired yellow songs under the guise of “replayed old songs” (旧歌重放) concerts. Those who sang yellow songs included not only young students but also workers, children, and even young soldiers.Footnote 54
Criticism from the People’s Daily was consistent with evidence found in other archival sources. For example, a report in the official bulletin Guangbo dongtai (广播动态) in July 1957 described the popularity of the “Old Songs Replayed” program at the Tianjin Broadcasting Station:
Our station’s “Old Songs Replayed” music program has been broadcast five times. Over the past month, “Old Songs Replayed” has generated significant interest among various social groups in Tianjin. To date, we have received a total of 493 letters from listeners, many of which were submitted as contributions requesting broadcasts. Among these 493 letters, only 13 of these letters expressed opposition to the program; the remainder offered strong support.Footnote 55
Similarly, a document issued by the Propaganda Department of the CCP’s Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee records the presence of yellow music at social events organized by state-run enterprises and government agencies during the same period:
According to information gathered in Hangzhou, many social dances organized by factories and enterprise agencies have become the primary venues for broadcasting yellow music, making them the primary hubs for its dissemination. On July 1st of 1957, the Youth League Committee of the City Service Company held a dance at the West Lake Hotel in celebration of the Party’s anniversary. At this grand event, a large number of yellow music records were played […] turning the event into a platform for spreading bourgeois low tastes. To “meet popular demand,” the same committee organized another dance in mid-July. On August 10th, a dance jointly held by the Municipal Supply and Marketing Cooperative, the Bureau of Commerce, and the People’s Bank also featured many yellow music records, including some reactionary songs dating back to the enemy occupation period. Although only 300 tickets were issued that day, over 400 people attended, with many unable to enter and instead enjoying the music from outside, tapping their feet and listening intently.Footnote 56
Moreover, a contemporaneous archival report issued by the Zhejiang Provincial Youth League voiced official concern over the enduring popularity of prerevolutionary songs and corroborated evidence of youth dissatisfaction with contemporary revolutionary repertoire during this period:
At the Hangzhou Machinery Repair Plant, many young workers were deeply fond of Zhou Xuan(周璇)’s songs “Song of the Four Seasons” (四季歌) and “The Wandering Songstress” (天涯歌女), listening to them repeatedly several times a day, often playing the same song multiple times in a row. Some young people remarked that contemporary songs (revolutionary songs) were dull and unpleasant to hear, whereas the earlier songs were melodious and rich in emotion. A student at Zhejiang University stated: “Since Liberation, there has not been a single song that represents my feelings; only these songs reflect my state of mind.” These “soft” songs […], however, were deemed entirely incompatible with the vigorous socialist construction that was underway.Footnote 57
As the Hundred Flowers Campaign ended and the CCP launched a new political crackdown on liberal intellectuals, criticizing the yellow songs, and promoting the red songs became an important task for officials. Meanwhile, during the Great Leap Forward (大跃进, 1958-1960), which sought to harness people’s revolutionary zeal to achieve a communist utopia, the propagation of red songs was used to remove the influence of yellow songs and ignite revolutionary zeal. According to a report issued by the Ministry of Culture regarding the campaign to eliminate yellow music, on the one hand, measures were implemented to prohibit yellow music in public spaces and the outlawing of vendors selling such records; on the other hand, the party proactively organized musicians to create red music and promoted it through radio and other channels. Consequently, a substantial number of red songs were both composed and widely disseminated among the populace.Footnote 58 According to the report of the People’s Daily,
The mass campaign to eliminate the influence of yellow music, which began to gain momentum at the end of last year, has achieved a major victory in the past few months. Everywhere, songs brimming with socialist revolutionary enthusiasm are being sung, while undesirable yellow music has vanished from public. In all public places, people can no longer hear the yellow songs.Footnote 59
However, even amidst the fervent revolutionary atmosphere, critical voices from the public began to emerge. Letters published in the People’s Daily questioned the state of cultural production, asking “why are there no good songs?” and “why are there no songs to sing?”Footnote 60 These comments reflected more than just general discontent – they revealed the growing dissatisfaction with the homogenized repertoire of officially sanctioned red songs. As the political climate intensified, a wide array of musical genres once appreciated by different social groups were increasingly subsumed under the stigmatized label of yellow music. The resulting narrowing of acceptable musical expression failed to address the diverse esthetic preferences and emotional needs of a complex and varied audience.
An article published in People’s Music (人民音乐) in 1958 also reveals a similar situation among the general public during that period. In some educational institutions, both teachers and students who were mandated to learn and sing socialist songs expressed their discontent with the designated song “Socialism is Good” (社会主义好) by complaining that it was “not good”(不好听), and that it was “meaningless, like talking” (像说话一样，没意思). As a result, during their instruction, only a few individuals participated in the singing, while many participants demanded to sing lyrical songs to “spice up” their lives with more relaxing and joyful music.Footnote 61 Simultaneously, people voted their preference on their feet as well. During a lecture titled “Eliminating the effects of yellow music,” the attendance significantly surpassed that of a typical “record appreciation session.” The audience was well organized and remained silent when pornographic songs were played. However, when socialist red records were played in contrast to the yellow records, a small disturbance arose in the audience, and some individuals left. By the end of the lecture, less than half of the audience remained.Footnote 62
When given the option to play music, red songs were often not the preferred choice for many individuals. Zheng Nian (郑念), a writer, recounted in her autobiography that when her daughter asked what kind of music to play at home, she replied, “Anything at all, but not revolutionary songs.”Footnote 63 This response underscores the resistance to revolutionary songs, which were created to indoctrinate Communist ideology into people’s minds but were still not fully embraced by people. Even songs with CCP ideology, which were expected to be internalized whenever they were played, failed to connect with many individuals.
In Zheng’s memory, red songs along with red guards and victims became the symbol of the Cultural Revolution (文化大革命, 1966-1976). Zheng documented one resistance in the prison during the Cultural Revolution. She recalled that on one Christmas Eve, there was a soprano singing Silent Night (平安夜), which was regarded as yellow music by the CCP. The sensitive timing and the selection of the song turned the act into a subtle but powerful challenge to authority. Zheng wrote that:
While I was waiting in the bitter cold, suddenly, from somewhere upstairs, I heard a young soprano voice singing, at first tentatively and then boldly, the Chinese version of “Silent Night.” The prison walls resounded with her songs as her clear and melodious voice floated in and out of the dark corridors. I was enraptured and deeply moved as I listened to her. I knew from the way she rendered the song that she was a professional singer who had incurred the displeasure of the Maoists.Footnote 64
When the police asked the prisoners about who had sung the song, no one responded, as if they reached a silent consensus.Footnote 65 Even in the countryside, there were still people playing and spreading yellow music during the Cultural Revolution.Footnote 66
Circulation of yellow music
Even though yellow music was officially blocked, Chinese people found ingenious ways to access and circulate it. First, they resorted to shortwave radios to listen to yellow music. During the Maoist era, the CCP exercised tight control over the cultural lives of its citizens, and anyone caught tuning in to forbidden foreign radio stations risked being charged with “Listening to the Enemy Radios” (偷听敌台). To enforce this, the CCP implemented strict measures to regulate the sale of radio equipment and mandated the registration of radio sets in 1950. In Shanghai, the authorities urged radio technicians to disable the shortwave feature on all available radio sets. These measures, however, often backfired and fueled more people to tune in secretly to “enemy” stations such as Voice of America.Footnote 67 Besides, despite these measures, not all radio owners registered their devices. Many individuals made use of radio sets from the Republican era that had never undergone government adjustments.Footnote 68 In addition, the widespread availability of radio sets due to a price drop in the early 1960s enabled more people to access overseas radio programs.Footnote 69 These shortwave radios served as vital media for Chinese people to connect with the outside world and access yellow music that the CCP had banned. One of the most prominent singers of yellow music was Teresa Teng, a highly influential Taiwanese singer whose music gradually found its way into mainland China through shortwave radio broadcasts in the 1970s.Footnote 70
Second, residents of coastal provinces in China were able to listen to music played over loudspeakers in Taiwan. From 1953 to 1991, both the CCP in mainland China and the KMT in Taiwan sought to disseminate their ideologies by using loudspeakers. Under specific natural environment conditions, amplified sound had the ability to traverse the strait and reach the ears and minds of people on the opposite shore. The earliest broadcasting station across the Taiwan Strait was constructed by the CCP, to which the KMT responded with their own broadcasting walls (播音墙) strategically positioned opposite the CCP’s stations. The KMT initially used its broadcasting stations to interfere with CCP broadcasts but later turned them into powerful tools in what was termed as the “heart war” (心战).Footnote 71 The contents of broadcasting from Taiwan included announcements and music,Footnote 72 notably featuring songs from Teresa Teng, whose music was considered decadent and thus banned by the CCP. Teng’s iconic tracks like “Sweet on You” (甜蜜蜜) were frequently played on Taiwanese broadcasting stations.Footnote 73
Third, music tapes were creatively sent across from Taiwan by giant balloons. Frank Teng, Teresa Teng’s brother, remembered that the Taiwanese government produced cassettes of her songs and placed them in massive five-story-high balloons. When the wind blew in the right direction, these balloons would drift over to the mainland side and carry the music to eager listeners.Footnote 74
Fourth, smuggled offshore music cassettes and pirated tapes made great contributions to the popularity of yellow music in post-socialist China. In 1978, when Deng Xiaoping initiated economic reforms and implemented the policy of reform and opening-up, there was a substantial increase in the economic ties between China and the Western world. Since the 1980s, many people have smuggled music cassettes from Hong Kong to Mainland China and even produced pirated tapes to sell. Even some CCP cadres used their power to smuggle music cassettes to make a profit. As the People’s Daily reported, some leaders of state-owned enterprises in Shenzhen smuggled 100,000 cassettes, and they illegally imported and copied 150,000 cassettes, which were then sold to 15 provinces, “a large share of them consists of yellow songs from Hong Kong and Taiwan, exerting a harmful influence on the social environment.”Footnote 75 Meanwhile, a document in the Guangzhou Municipal Archives revealed that unlicensed video and audio cassette smuggling, sales, and playback were extremely widespread in 1981.Footnote 76 For instance, government agents in the southernmost part of Guangdong Province’s Zhanjiang region seized 270,000 cassettes from Hong Kong ships in 1980.Footnote 77 More alarmingly for officials, the provincial investigation revealed that the majority of these cassettes were resold to nearby businesses by the Public Security Department at a premium price of 3 to 5 yuan per box, with the exception of a small number that were purchased domestically by Party cadres.Footnote 78
Finally, another channel through which Western music made its way into China was through “Cut-out” record (dakoudie, 打口碟). In the Chinese context, “打口” (dakou) referred to overseas audio-visual products that entered China through the gray market of solid waste imports. They were named as “Cut-out” because they often arrived with physical defects, like saw cuts on the packaging. In the 1980s, surplus audio-visual products from major European and American labels were imported into China as industrial raw materials after being cut by traders from the southeast coast of China at favorable prices on the international scrap market. Subsequently, in the early 1990s, the term “Cut-out” became associated with music records, mainly including cassette tapes and CD laser records.Footnote 79 This phenomenon significantly contributed to introducing Western rock music to China and had a profound impact on the subcultural imagination of its listeners.Footnote 80
The CCP’s prohibition of yellow songs failed to suppress people’s emotional demands and instead led to the emergence of different circulation forms of yellow songs. The following section will analyze the influence of yellow music on the Chinese populace through a case study of Teresa Teng’s songs, exploring the power negotiations over sonic space between the yellow music listeners and the CCP government in post-socialist China.
Music as protest: Teresa Teng, cultural cold war, and individual liberation
Following Deng Xiaoping’s ascent to power, the CCP initiated a partial relaxation of its control over society, and focused on economic development and the promotion of modernization.Footnote 81 After 1978, as the pursuit of socialist ideals gradually diminished, a void in ideological beliefs emerged.Footnote 82 Consequently, as the CCP loosened its grip on society, the underground yellow music that had circulated secretly during the Maoist era entered the public sphere in the 1980s. Revolutionary songs gradually yielded ground to more individualistic songs, epitomized by Teng’s music, which became a daily auditory fixture in the lives of the Chinese people. Teng became so popular that Chinese people even compared her fame to that of Deng Xiaoping, with a saying: “Listen to Old Deng (Deng Xiaoping) during the day, listen to Little Deng (Teresa Teng) at night” (白天听老邓, 晚上听小邓).Footnote 83
Teng’s music and the cultural cold war
Teng’s popularity in mainland China must be contextualized within the broader dynamics of the Cultural Cold War. Since the 1970s, mainland listeners were able to access her music through “enemy” radio broadcasts – most notably from Taiwan – which positioned her songs not merely as entertainment but as instruments of ideological penetration within psychological warfare. Originally developed as a military strategy to influence soldiers’ morale, “psychological warfare” evolved into a means of reshaping public consciousness through transnational media during the Cold War. International radio became a particularly effective tool: during the postwar years, America supported radio stations such as Voice of America in their efforts to destabilize communist influence through targeted broadcasting. Following a similar logic, the KMT government in Taiwan established the Voice of Free China (自由中国之声, VOFC) in 1950 to disseminate anti-Communist ideology across the Taiwan Strait.Footnote 84 Technological gaps in the PRC’s jamming infrastructure enabled these broadcasts to reach large segments of the mainland population.Footnote 85
Rather than simply broadcasting across territorial borders, Taiwan’s strategy sought to traverse ideological boundaries. Historian Dayton Lekner observes that these transmissions aimed to transform political consciousness “in place,” addressing not abstract publics but the everyday experiences of individuals.Footnote 86 In order to build a loyal audience across regions and professions, VOFC’s programming in the 1960s expanded to include entertainment content.Footnote 87 Music became instrumental to this effort. By the 1970s, each hour of programming opened with ten minutes of music, with frequent airplay given to artists such as Teresa Teng, Feng Feifei (凤飞飞), and Liu Wenzheng (刘文正). In 1979, the launch of a dedicated program titled “Teresa Teng Time” (邓丽君时间) marked a further escalation of psychological warfare. Broadcast six times per week, the program continued uninterrupted until Teng’s death in 1995.Footnote 88
As Wang Yu has argued, although these broadcasts often appeared politically neutral in their depiction of everyday life in Taiwan, they had a deeply political effect on mainland audiences, encouraging them to imagine alternative ways of life.Footnote 89 Teng’s songs, as musical expressions “smuggled” from outside, helped listeners construct imagined visions of the outside world. A prominent music producer, Hao Fang (郝舫), recalled, “In the 1980s, Chinese pop music was most influenced by Hong Kong and Taiwan, like Teresa Teng. After the entry of the Cut-outs, the ears of the Chinese people were suddenly opened as if the whole world was repainted to them.”Footnote 90 As Lin Peiyin points out, Teng’s popularity in China can be contextualized within the wider phenomenon of a populace’s demand for other well-liked cultural products originating from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and the West.Footnote 91 Within this context, Teng’s songs should be understood not only as emotional or esthetic experiences but also as vehicles of cross-border ideological negotiation during a transformative period in Cold War Asia.
Teresa Teng and the emergence of individual subjectivity in post-socialist China
Moreover, Teng’s popularity in the PRC must be understood within the broader transition from socialist to post-socialist China. The Cultural Revolution had brought about tremendous repression and suffering, and distorted human nature. Human interaction was measured only by “class consciousness” (阶级意识). After 1978, unlike songs that glorified the proletariat, revolutionary struggle, and heroic martyrs, Teng’s songs did not inspire people to sacrifice their lives to combat class enemies. Instead, her songs focused on individuals’ inner worlds and expressed their personal emotions. The long-suppressed individuals were able to find personal expression through yellow songs.Footnote 92 It was the depiction of personal emotions and love in Teng’s music that enlightened the sense of “self” of Chinese people.Footnote 93 As the famous Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke (贾樟柯) once recalled in a 2020 interview reflecting on the significance of Teng’s music:
Before that, the songs we sang were “We Are the Successors of Communism” (我们是共产主义的接班人) and “We Workers Have Power” (咱们工人有力量), and it was always about “we” (我们), but Teresa’s song was “The Moon Represents My Heart” (月亮代表我的心) and it was about “me” (我).Footnote 94
Teng’s music marked a subtle shift from “we” to “I,” inverting the CCP’s decades-long promotion of the subordination of the individual (小我) to the collective (大我). Her affective style and repertoire – such as her cover of Zhou Xuan (周璇)’s “When Will You Return?” (何日君再来) – carried forward a tradition of sentimental solo ballads that had been marginalized since the 1940s. This song, once popular in the Republican era, was emblematic of the “modern songs” style suppressed in the revolutionary music order, which had prioritized mass songs and collective choral performance to advance political indoctrination. During the anti-Japanese war and early socialist period, the left-wing musical movement condemned such romantic and individualistic songs as “yellow music” – vulgar and demoralizing – and displaced them in favor of revolutionary anthems. However, after decades of cultural suppression, Teng’s voice reintroduced a long-silenced emotional register to Chinese audiences.Footnote 95 Notably, while Teresa Teng’s cover of “When Will You Return?” was criticized by the CCP in the early 1980s, many songs by Zhou Xuan and other popular music from the Republican era experienced a revival during the same period. According to music scholar Andreas Steen, the PRC’s campaign against “spiritual pollution” sparked criticism of the increasing popularity of Western and Hong Kong-Taiwan music, but a compromise had to be reached, as such music was also a major source of revenue for profit-driven state-owned record companies. To address this tension, cultural bureaus promoted works in the more “healthy” popular music style while continuing to criticize music from Hong Kong and Taiwan. Within this framework, Zhou Xuan’s repertoire was revitalized through official channels, functioning not only as a creative blueprint for new works but also as an emblem of easing political controls.Footnote 96 Steen argues that its earlier appeal and distinctly “Chinese” characteristics, particularly Zhou’s modernized folk vocal style enriched with traditional elements, were seen as an effective response to the influence of Western popular music.Footnote 97
Nonetheless, Teng’s cover of Zhou Xuan’s songs, along with other prerevolutionary works, became essential to her repertoire and gained widespread popularity in 1980s China. This revival went beyond entertainment; it revived a human-centered musical tradition that foregrounded individual emotion, love, and longing – challenging the collectivist norms that had defined Maoist esthetics.Footnote 98
This cultural reorientation is reflected in how Teng’s songs were received. In 2008, Southern Metropolis Daily (南方都市报) named Teresa Teng a “reform and opening-up figure of the times.” (改革开放风云人物) Her tribute read:
Teresa Teng was a gift from the classical to the modern – a long-lost greeting, a resonance of heavenly beauty and human emotion. It was precisely because of this unique texture that, when Chinese people were eager to break free from the robe of “revolutionary” ethics, Teng’s so-called decadent voice transformed into a whisper of personal freedom – “I am here” (我在) – carrying with it an irresistible subversive power and a kind of philosophical allure.Footnote 99
Writer Wang Shuo (王朔) echoed this sentiment in his essay “My View On Popular Culture” (我看大众文化), noting: “Listening to Teresa Teng’s songs – this is no exaggeration – it felt as though the human side of me was awakening, as if something long encased in a hard shell was being softened and dissolved.”Footnote 100 Literary scholar Tao Dongfeng emphasized that “humanity” (人性) was the keyword in Wang’s reflection. In his view, revolutionary culture had encased humanity for decades – dormant but not extinguished – and Teng’s “decadent” voice reawakened this sensibility.Footnote 101 Tao also observed that for youth raised solely on model operas and red songs, Teng’s soft and melodic singing felt like “being bathed in a spring breeze.”Footnote 102
Media scholar Cheng Chen-ching argues that Teng’s music served as an outlet for individuals seeking ideological liberation and a return to humanistic values.Footnote 103 Tao Dongfeng likewise believes that her songs aligned with the intellectual movement of the time toward enlightenment and humanitarianism. At the very least, her music paralleled this current in moving away from the framework of class struggle and singular revolutionary culture, and contributed to the emergence of a new sense of subjectivity. In this way, Teresa Teng’s music – through its emotional intimacy and cultural resonance – offered a quiet but profound alternative to the collectivist ethos of Maoist China.Footnote 104
From rejection to co-optation: The CCP’s shifting stance on Teresa Teng and cultural governance
Teresa Teng’s music, along with other Western cultural influences, swiftly swept across the nation. By the summer of 1982, however, concerns were rising among certain figures in the central leadership that socialist values were under threat. In addition to anxieties about growing economic crimes, officials warned of a wave of ideological dangers – described as “sugar-coated bullets” conveying bourgeois and capitalist values. Among these perceived threats, pornography and popular music were grouped together as symptoms of spiritual decay. Young people, particularly men, were portrayed as vulnerable to foreign “corrupting influences” that conflicted with the values of Chinese socialism. These anxieties blended moralistic discourses about gender, sexuality, and class with ideological suspicion of Western and commercial culture. Authorities responded with intensified policing of schools and public spaces, where often disseminated pornography, cassette tapes, and related materials.Footnote 105
In the same year, the People’s Music Publishing House (人民音乐出版社) published How to Identify Yellow Music (怎样鉴别黄色歌曲), which denounced popular music, especially that from Hong Kong and Taiwan, as vulgar and spiritually corrosive.Footnote 106 While the book did not name Teresa Teng directly, it strongly criticized her signature song “When Will You Come Back Again.” The campaign culminated in 1983 with the launch of the Eliminating Spiritual Pollution (清除精神污染) movement, led by more conservative factions within the CCP who revived earlier Mao-era ideological critiques of yellow music. In this context, the term “yellow music,” again as an instrument in cultural and ideological campaigns, was deployed to guard against both capitalist cultural influence and the perceived threat of “peaceful evolution.”Footnote 107
In fact, the popularity of yellow music in the 1980s not only raised concerns about an ideological crisis among the CCP central leadership but also prompted grassroots-level officials to re-evaluate existing cultural policies. According to a recently declassified document from the Zhejiang Provincial Archives, the Rui’an County Workers’ Cultural Palace (瑞安县工人文化宮) in Zhejiang Province once reported in 1983:
In the days of the proliferation of pornographic songs, why did a large number of people, especially young workers, lose their ability to resist? We analyze that it was mainly due to the trauma of ten years of civil strife. The influence of the theory of the so-called “literary and artistic gap” (文艺空白论) of more than a hundred years between the age of Internationale and the model opera (样板戏) created by the “Gang of Four” (四人帮) has not been removed. So, the masses of young workers do not understand past history. In addition, after the crushing of the “Gang of Four,” we unilaterally promoted the prosperity of capitalist countries, creating confusion in people’s minds.Footnote 108
To regain control over the ideological landscape, the CCP confiscated large quantities of pirated music tapes from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other foreign sources in the early 1980s.Footnote 109 This action served not only to exert ideological control but also to address international concerns. According to the government gazette published by the Guangdong provincial government in 1981, “These pirated tapes not only provide unintentional propaganda for capitalist culture but also violate international copyright laws, resulting in copyright disputes and severe political repercussions.”Footnote 110 Moreover, a document from the State Council addressing imported foreign music tapes in 1984 stated, “Without the consent of the original foreign and Hong Kong/Taiwan publishers, reproducing and selling their recordings damages our country’s reputation.”Footnote 111 Thus, the confiscation served dual purposes: domestically, it sought to counter Western cultural influence and reinforce socialist cultural dominance; internationally, it aimed to shape and maintain a favorable image of the PRC in the international community.
Beyond confiscating tapes, the CCP launched grassroots campaigns promoting red songs to counter the spread of yellow music. For instance, Pinghu County in Zhejiang Province held special music training for youth for more than six months to help them differentiate between “healthy” and “decadent” music in 1983, with the “defects” in Teresa Teng’s music as a special target.Footnote 112 From 1980 to 1983, Rui’an County organized weekly red songs singing programs, held consistently regardless of the weather.Footnote 113 After four years, grassroots officials declared victory in this “ideological and cultural struggle,” asserting that “wholesome singing has finally reclaimed the market, and decadent music is no longer allowed in public.”Footnote 114
Yet the CCP in the 1980s was not ideologically monolithic. Reform-oriented leaders such as Hu Yaobang (胡耀邦) and Zhao Ziyang (赵紫阳) sought to balance cultural openness with political control, and by the end of 1983, they pushed back against the excesses of the anti-spiritual pollution campaign, fearing it would hinder economic modernization.Footnote 115 As the central leadership recalibrated its approach to cultural policy, regional authorities began to show greater tolerance for popular music, including Teresa Teng’s works. In January 1985, China Youth Daily (中国青年报) published an article featuring Teng’s two grandaunts in Hebei Province, in which Teng is portrayed as part of a Chinese family lineage that would one day return “home.”Footnote 116 In February 1985, Beijing Youth Daily published a rare interview with Teng. In it, she expressed enthusiasm for the mainland’s modernization efforts and emphasized a shared desire among Chinese people worldwide for national development and unity:
Building a strong China is the shared aspiration of overseas Chinese and Chinese people on both sides of the Strait. Those of us living overseas care deeply about the mainland’s development. Especially now, no matter which country you’re in, China is always a hot topic.
I’ve read some reports while in Hong Kong and learned that the mainland is now promoting modernization, civility, and national development. That makes me truly happy.Footnote 117
This change in media tone reflects more than a passive concession to popular musical taste. Given Teng’s massive popularity, her music became not only culturally tolerated but politically repurposed. Coverage in state media underscored her Chinese identity and familial connection to the mainland, and reframed her within the ideological language of “the United Front (统一战线)” and the “One China” policy. Hebei Provincial Television later aired a documentary-style program about Teng’s hometown visit, and in 1986, a book compiling 225 of her songs was published in Beijing.Footnote 118 These developments suggest that, rather than simply resisting or suppressing Teng’s cultural presence, some elements within the CCP saw political value in incorporating her into a broader strategy of soft power and cross-Strait messaging.
Moreover, the reappropriation of Teresa Teng’s image and music closely coincided with a broader reorientation in the PRC’s Taiwan policy. On January 1, 1979, the PRC issued a “Letter to Taiwanese Compatriots” (告台湾同胞书), which marked a discursive departure from the term “liberation” – used throughout the Maoist period – in favor of “reunification.” Unlike earlier propaganda that centered on Cold War confrontation, demonized the KMT, or relied on the antagonistic presence of the United States as a foil, this letter envisioned a more conciliatory approach. It emphasized shared cultural, familial, and national ties across the Strait, proposing practical measures such as postal, transportation, and tourism links, as well as academic, cultural, and sporting exchanges.Footnote 119 Within this new framework, the Party’s evolving stance toward Teng encompassed more than a concession to popular music tastes; it reflected a broader effort to incorporate her image into the ideological and emotional terrain of reunification.
This dual register – balancing mass appeal with ideological repositioning – was especially visible in the Party’s shifting cultural policies of the late 1980s. In the wake of student protests in December 1986 and the removal of Hu Yaobang in early 1987, conservative elements within the CCP launched a campaign against “bourgeois liberalization” (反对资产阶级自由化).Footnote 120 Yet after the campaign’s decline in mid-1987, reformist officials and regional authorities began adjusting their stance. Popular demand for Teng’s music – evident in widespread underground circulation and audience enthusiasm – could no longer be ignored. Within months, internal discussions emerged regarding the possibility of inviting Teng to perform in the mainland.
A recently declassified Party document housed in the Shanghai Municipal Archives, dated 1988, confirmed these considerations, stating: “Given the current favorable conditions for advancing efforts toward Taiwan’s return, inviting Teresa Teng to perform in the mainland would help promote emotional ties across the Taiwan Strait and fulfill the long-held wish of mainland audiences.”Footnote 121 However, due to swiftly changing political circumstances, Teng never managed to perform in Shanghai and never set foot in China throughout her lifetime.Footnote 122 Nonetheless, the very consideration of such a move demonstrates how cultural governance in the post-socialist era was shaped by both bottom-up pressures and top-level ideological shifts.
Rather than portraying the CCP and the public as homogenous, opposing blocs, this case demonstrates a more complex, hybrid mechanism. Cultural policy in post-socialist China emerged through negotiation between popular enthusiasm (especially among yellow music listeners), the Party’s internal debates, and shifting geopolitical priorities. The reconfiguration of Teng’s position in mainland China from banned artist to prospective cultural ambassador illustrates how cultural symbols could be reinterpreted to serve both political integration and mass cultural consumption in the evolving landscape of reform-era China.
Conclusion
Barbara Mittler has argued that propaganda during the Cultural Revolution was neither passively absorbed nor entirely rejected; rather, it was often engaged with critically and creatively. Audiences derived emotional engagement – even joy – from officially sanctioned music and art, yet this enjoyment did not necessarily signal ideological compliance.Footnote 123 Similarly, listening to yellow music should not be viewed simplistically as a deliberate act of resistance. As Mittler notes, the gap between what was officially acceptable and what was actually practiced was often wide. One of her interviewees, for instance, recalled playing banned music discreetly – an act that underscores the uneven implementation of cultural policy at the local level.Footnote 124
While I agree with Mittler’s observation about this gap, I argue that the availability and circulation of music were highly contingent on the degree to which local CCP cadre’s enforced national directives. For example, during the Cultural Revolution, listening to Teresa Teng’s music via “enemy radio” broadcasts could result in re-education through labor or harsher penalties. Some students were criticized or punished for tuning into foreign stations, even after the Cultural Revolution had ended.Footnote 125 Listening to yellow music constituted a deviation from Party ideology, especially given the CCP’s long-standing dichotomy of red versus yellow music – a framework that cast yellow music as a symbolic enemy from Maoist China into the early reform era. Regardless of listeners’ intentions, their rejection of official music in favor of alternative forms underscored a deeper dissatisfaction with the cultural products sanctioned by the state. This act of listening, often carried out at personal risk, revealed the limits of cultural control and can thus be understood as an indirect form of resistance.
More importantly, this cultural contestation initiated a process of negotiation between yellow music listeners and the CCP’s mechanisms of governance – one shaped by the interplay of domestic political change and Cold War geopolitics. The transnational flow of music via “enemy” broadcasts, particularly the popularity of Teresa Teng’s songs, was embedded in the larger context of psychological warfare between opposing ideological blocs. Teng’s entry into the PRC’s soundscape – initially banned, later partially tolerated, and eventually appropriated – mirrors the CCP’s broader transition from revolutionary austerity to pragmatic modernization. Her music, laden with personal emotion and individual expression, offered a stark contrast to Mao-era collectivist esthetics, and played a significant role in shaping the emerging subjectivities of post-socialist China.
The CCP’s evolving attitude toward Teng – from censorship and critique to eventual embrace – reflected not only her cultural influence but also internal factional struggles and shifting ideological priorities. By the mid- to late 1980s, Teng’s symbolic value was repurposed to support the Party’s united front policies and cross-strait messaging. In this sense, the story of yellow music and its reception illuminates the complexities of CCP cultural governance – not as a monolithic apparatus, but as a site of ongoing negotiation shaped by popular preferences, intra-party dynamics, and international forces. This article has argued that the history of yellow music in the PRC reveals not only state control but also the limits of that control, and the agency of listeners who, through their everyday musical choices, subtly contested and reshaped the cultural order.
Acknowledgements
The author gratefully acknowledges the editorial team and the two anonymous reviewers for their efficient work and insightful feedback. Special thanks are due to Dayton Lekner for generously sharing his personal collection. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2023 HGSA Paul Lucas History Graduate Conference at Indiana University Bloomington and the 2024 HDR Seminar at the China Studies Centre, University of Sydney, where the author benefited from valuable comments by Fei-Hsien Wang and Minglu Chen. The author would also like to thank Boren Zhang, Claire Lowrie, Jason Lim, and Zhelun Zhou for their thoughtful readings and constructive suggestions on earlier drafts.
Competing interests
The author(s) declare(s) none.
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