Soft Power Across the Strait The Influence of Taiwanese Popular Culture on Mainland China

Anji Clubb Taiwan in the 21st Century, Professor Sutter

Georgetown University, 2006

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For roughly two decades, Taiwanese pop culture has enjoyed immense

popularity in mainland China. Beginning with the croonings of Teresa Teng in

the 70s and 80s, the island-country made its mark on its cross-strait neighbors

with cultural exports that grew out of Taiwans globalized consumer society and

a rapidly advancing economy. All things Taiwanese soon became seen as

status symbols of the emerging middle class in China, from clothing styles to

restaurant choices. Taiwans music, TV shows, and fashion styles serve as the

definition of trendy for the mainlander population even today, represented by

such popular cultural commodities as the teen soap Meteor Garden and music

artists like Jay Chou and A-Mei. Even the Taiwanese accent when speaking

Mandarin is considered cool by mainland Chinese youth. With so much sway

over the younger generations of China, Taiwans cultural influence on the

mainland represents a kind of soft power which serves to contrast its hard

power weakness relative to China in the cross-strait conundrum. The

implications of such soft power are debatable; however, this kind of cultural

leverage serves as an interesting and powerful perspective from which to gauge

the complex balance of power between Taiwan and China.

Early Influences

In 1995, it was announced that singing superstar Teresa Teng had died

in Thailand. The news rocked the Chinese world, from the populations of

Singapore and Malaysia, to the PRC and Hong Kong. China scholar Geremie

Barm called the event a deeply felt moment of unified Chinese cultural

mourning (125). Teng had been an immensely popular singer from Taiwan

during the 70s and 80s. Her songs spoke of personal desires of love and

longing, transfixing more than a generation of listeners in the Chinese-speaking

world. Moreover, she is probably considered the first cultural export from Taiwan

to the PRC. Her subsequent popularity on the mainland would be a precursor to

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the Taiwanese creations to follow, a popularity originally considered a threat by

the Beijing authorities. In the early 1980s, Beijing reacted to this threat by

chastising Tengs music as pornographic and traitorous whilst ordering her

cassette tapes burned in public (125). Apparently, the CCP was attempting to

deter people from non-mainland music (117); they were, however, too late.

Music originating in Taiwan, alongside other pop-culture creations such as

magazines, fashion, and the petit-bourgeois lifestyle of Taipei residents had

already taken hold of mainland hearts.

Other musical exports which followed Teng in the 80s were popular

singers such as Luo Dayou (128), Su Rui, Wan Shalang, and Pan Anbang

(Bosco 397). In his essay, Go With Your Feelings: Hong Kong and Taiwan

Popular Culture in Greater China, Thomas B. Gold illustrates the popularity of

Taiwanese music in the 80s with the following anecdote: Trying to puzzle out the Communist Leaderships reactions to the massive

demonstrations then under way during the Spring of 1989, some Chinese wits turned to

Go With Your Feelings, a well-known song recorded by the Taiwan pop singer Su Rui.

Thisrevealed the pervasiveness of popular culture from peripheral China on the

mainland core: an allusion to a pop song from Taiwan could be used (and understood)

to sum up an extremely volatile situation. (255)

Music was not the only pervasive form of pop culture from Taiwan

during this period. Just as Taiwanese pop songs had an expressive power for

the mainland population by virtue of their mass popularity, so too did Taiwanese

literature (259). Taiwanese author San Mao, many of whose works were inspired

by time living on the Sahara in the 1970s with her Spanish husband, became

belatedly popular in the PRC in the late 1980s, in particular amongst teenagers

and 20-somethings (Barm 110). Described by Barm as a model of the

acquisitive and modern petit-bourgeois romantic from the mid-1970s, San

Maos words were used in a similarly representative fashion as Su Ruis in an

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activity sponsored by the Beijing Youth News (110). This activity came in the

form of a debate over the nature of self-sacrifice where the publications readers

were asked to choose between the following quotes:

In his heart he had a place for all the People, but no room for himself.

(speaking of Jiao Yulu, a model cadre in the fashion of Lei Feng)

If you give everything to others, youll discover youve spent your life

abusing one person: yourself. (San Mao)

At the end of the weeks-long debate, Barm writes that Beijing Youth News

editors found that many people failed to see the relevance of Jiao Yulu as a

viable role model (112). Although this doesnt necessarily mean that San Mao

was the role model of choice for 1980s Chinese youth (she committed suicide in

1991), this debate does point again to the pervasiveness of popular culture

from Taiwan mentioned by Gold, that the words of a petit-bourgeois

Taiwanese writer would be compared to those describing an exemplary CCP

cadre in the pages of a popular Beijing news publication.

Economic development and changing cultural values

The popularity of San Mao in 80s and 90s mainland China, along with

the Taiwanese singers mentioned above, points to various societal and

economic developments in the PRC during that time. Barm mentions that San

Maos popularity had to do with her self-absorbed image and cutesy egotistical

prose which rang true with mainland Chinese in the throes of the type of

consumer revolution that had helped make San Mao so popular in Hong Kong

and Taiwan (110). As this statement makes clear, one of the greatest reasons

for the popularity of pop culture from Taiwan on the mainland came from Chinas

economic development and the effects of it on Chinese society. Taiwan had

gone through something similar before, and the resultant culture was appealing

to new members of a cosmopolitan consumer lifestyle. Along with a raised

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standard of living, Chinese society began to take on more capitalist traits such

as commercialism and consumerism. Taiwanese products were able to speak to

this new aspect of Chinese society, as they were products stemming from the

cosmopolitan market economy that the island-country had achieved a couple of

decades earlier in the 1960s and 70s.

During the period of Taiwans development beginning in the 50s and

going on into the 80s and even 90s, the island experienced phenomenal growth,

much like what we are witnessing in China today. This economic growth caused

per capita income to skyrocket, increasing two hundredfold between 1950 and

1992 (Roy 86). The social impact of this rapid economic change was that

Taiwan became a mass consumption society (87). By the mid-1980s, most

Taiwanese families owned all the modern appliances available at the time, such

as color TVs, washing machines, and telephones. In fact, by this time, the

number of the above appliances per family was higher in Taiwan than in the US

(87). Along with the raised standard of living and higher incomes, Taiwanese

spent more time on leisure and recreation, which included listening to music,

karaoke, and dancing (91). Indeed, John Bosco observed in the early 90s,

Discos and beauty pageants, though only legal in Taiwan since the late 1980s,

are signs of Taiwans participation in a modern, cosmopolitan, popular culture.

(397). These developments helped contribute to the rise of popular culture in

Taiwan, a popular culture which in many ways went hand in hand with the

commercialism and consumerism that came with economic development.

Across the Strait, Chinese society went through similar processes with the

development that resulted from Reform and Opening in 1978. GDP per capita

growth (based on income growth) was 10.6 percent between 1983 and 1988,

and 7.5 percent between 1988 and 1993 (OECD 32). Adding to that an influx of

new technologies which could facilitate the spread of culture (Gold 264), and

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Taiwanese cultural products found a ready market in the developing PRC (257).

Some of the facilitating new technologies which appeared on the mainland were

tape recorders, the walkman, VCRs, personal TVs, cell phones, and satellite

dishes (264). Media in China also became increasingly diverse. From 1978-

1990, the number of radio stations in the PRC grew from 32 to 521, and

television stations from 93 to 666. Ownership of television sets per 100 people

increased from 1 to 16.2. Since the 1990s, cable networks have also greatly

expanded, as has advertising in China (Chan 70). All of these developments

helped make music, movies, and TV shows from Taiwan accessible to the

mainland population.

With the economic reforms, Chinese society went through a process

similar to Taiwan, which Gold describes as the marketization and privatization

of much of economic life, culture included. (266) This process translated into

the birth of commercialism and consumerism in the social realm, a trend in

which products from Taiwan fit perfectly. Taiwan, along with Hong Kong, was a

market economy where culture, like virtually everything else, is a commodity

(Gold 256). These commodities captured the dynamism and modernity that

mainlanders were beginning to experience and aspire to. A New York Times

article from May 4, 1989, describes how movies, music, and clothing styles

from Taiwan have helped to define modernity for the PRC... (Bosco 397).

Taiwanese pop culture began to represent to mainlanders what it meant to be a

modern Chinese in the globalized world order, while at the same time

representing something foreign and sophisticated, as it came from outside of

the mainland (Gold 263).

Writing in 1995, Gold stated:

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Because Mainland Chinese now know that Hong Kong and Taiwan have achieved

miraculous economic development, and their people have a high standard of living, they

provide a model of modern Chinese life-style for mainland Chinese to emulate. (263)

Barm even went so far as to assert the following: The beacons of the futurewere not necessarily the rhetoric-rich thinkers or politicians

of the Westbut the crass and glib consumer models of Hong Kong and Taiwan, which

had already digested the essence of global culture. (124)

This influence from Taiwan, alongside Hong Kong, led to discussions at the time

in the central-peripheral context of what is deemed Greater China. In 1991,

neo-Confucianist Tu Weiming wrote an essay entitled: Cultural China: the

periphery as the center in which he concluded that the peripheral locations of

cultural China, such as Taiwan, would come to set the economic and cultural

agenda for the center [PRC] (Chua 201). Barm, in the same vein, also asserts

that after 1989, there was a reorientation towards Taiwan and Hong Kong as

cultural centers (124). The newly commercialized popular culture which

replaced the official Maoist popular culture especially after Tiananmen Square,

is even said by writer Lu Hsiao-peng to have completely replaced the old

popular culture andbecome the dominant cultural force (150).

One of the reasons for the popularity of Taiwanese pop culture was

related not only to its modern nature but also to its contrast in tone and quality

to Mainland Chinese pop culture creations at the time, creations which were

still reminiscent of the official popular culture of pre-reform China. This official

popular culture extolled the masses and the nation over the individual, and

likewise sang the praises of such virtues as selflessness, hard work, and

sacrifice. These were the virtues of the Hunan Party Secretary Jiao Yulu with

whom San Mao went head to head in the Beijing Youth News debate. However,

as that debate revealed, such high virtues no longer struck a chord with the

young Chinese participating in the debate. Marketization seemed to deem the

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official virtues less relevant, and new ideas and values came to take their place.

In contrast to the heavily ideological communist culture, pop culture from Taiwan

filled the void with its intensely personal music and family dramas (Gold 261).

Gold even points out how in Taiwanese pop music, the word I is used

frequently, which had previously been denigrated in the PRC. He also

mentions that the sense of fun and relaxation conveyed by Taiwanese music

was quite striking when compared to the extraordinary intensity and

dogmatism of mainland cultural goods (261). When it came to such cultural

goods as TV shows, people increasingly wanted content which related to

contemporary life, not that which sermonized (Keane 134). The gap between official ideology and the reality that Chinese, especially young

urbanites, experienced, turned them decisively away from the lofty collectivist ideals

which the authorities defined as central to a good life towards the individualist values

expressed in Gangtai1 and other foreign culture. (268).

Reform and Opening allowed the straitjacket of Maoist popular culture to be

thrown off, so that not every creative endeavor or commodity had to be

manifested within the intellectual boundaries of the socialist revolutionary ideal

(Dujunco 25). One might even endeavor to describe this shift in the priority of

values to the mainland population as a change in the collective consciousness

or simply the culture of Chinese society.

The 1990s

Thus, the pop culture which flowed over from across the strait filled the

vacuum left by official popular culture in the context of a new, modernizing

Chinese society (Platt 1). These circumstances account for the widespread

popularity of cultural exports from Taiwan to the mainland in the last two

decades of the 20th century. Interestingly, various scholars suggest that the

1 Gangtai is a joint term which refers to Hong Kong (xiang gang) and Taiwan (tai wan).

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cultural flow from Taiwan actually increased after the Tiananmen student

protests of 1989 (Gold 257). Perhaps with the political clampdown following the

protests, imported pop culture became an even more significant source of

expression and escape for the mainland population. Throughout the 1990s,

music, TV shows, literature, advertisements, dcor, attire, and leisure were all

forms of popular culture which spread from Taiwan, and Hong Kong, to China

(256). Fashions, hairstyles, consumer items, interior decorating, lifestyles,

cuisine, and even mainstream language, putonghua, increasingly emulated the

south. (Barm 125) Virtually every aspect of modern-day life in the PRC was

influenced by the trends and culture of Taiwan, along with its cosmopolitan

southern neighbor, Hong Kong.

Pirated tapes and CDs of popular Taiwan and Hong Kong artists appeared even

in official outlets such as Xinhua Bookstore, whilst posters of the idols and

superstars of the time, such as the Taiwanese boy group Little Tiger Team

(xiao hu dui ) were ubiquitous in the shops and on the streets (Gold 258).

Karaoke bars, which had become popular in the 80s, carried music mostly from

Taiwan or Hong Kong. Barm writes that in 1991, 80 percent of the most popular

600 songs sung in karaoke bars originated from Taiwan and Hong Kong (116).

Also during the 90s, many aspects of Taiwanese lifestyle were copied on

the mainland. Many of the popular posh restaurants in urban centers were

created in the style of Taipei or Hong Kong eating joints, and even some

downtown districts were styled in the way of the bustling hot spots of Taipei

(Gold 259). A comeback of the traditional-style teahouse also made its way to

the PRC from Taiwan. The teahouses, or cha yi guan (), were considered

stylish meeting grounds which were not only born as a sign for a group of

people to distinguish themselves but [were] also a success story due to the

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emergence of a powerful modern consumer culture. (Zheng 203) Print media

also came to resemble the glossy commercial style of Gangtai publications

(Barm 127) while TV ads increasingly reflected the middle class tastes of

Taiwan and Hong Kong (Gold 258). Taiwanese styles and commodities touching

upon almost every part of life became status symbols coveted by the mainland

population.

The 21st Century

In the current decade, Taiwanese pop culture is the unceasing trend, as

it has continued to influence the younger generations of the PRC. Taiwanese

soap operas and pop stars remain incredibly popular, also influencing fashion

styles and fads amongst youth on the mainland. Even Taiwanese-style Mandarin,

from its colloquialisms to its accent, is seen as a trendy form of speech. To

illustrate this point, I will use some recent examples of popular Taiwanese

celebrities and trends in the PRC.

F4 and Meteor Garden. The super hip boy band Flower 4, popularly

known by its acronym F4, and the teen soap Meteor Garden which made them

popular, are arguably the most popular Taiwan cultural exports to the PRC since

Teresa Teng. Four virtual unknowns when the soap opera was made, they

quickly shot to superstardom as Meteor Garden gained massive popularity in

Hong Kong, the PRC, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and the

Philippines (Seno 1). Their pan-Asian popularity was a breakthrough

phenomenon; according to a Singapore-based executive at MTV Asia. "No one

else has crossed over the way they have." (1) A 2003 Newsweek article claimed

that with 3.5 million albums sold across pirating-ridden Asia, the group had

become ambassadors of Greater China (1). To the PRC, these artists were

pop culture ambassadors from across the strait.

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The TV soap Meteor Garden was a Taiwanese production based on a

Japanese comic book. The show revolves around the drama of a Taipei college

where the rich popular clique F4 dominates school life. When newcomer

Shan Cai enters the school, she is labeled an outcast by F4, thus creating a

dramatic tension between her and the F4 leader, Dao Mingsi. Finally, after much

drama, a romance blossoms between the two leads, and by the end of the

second and last season, they finally get together. (Wikipedia Meteor Garden)

The show, after enjoying immense popularity in Taiwan, spread to the

PRC where it became so popular, the authorities banned it from state television

on which it had already begun airing. Beijing stated that the soap opera

promoted unhealthy attitudes based on its occasional violence and

ubiquitous materialism (Newsweek Angie). As the China Daily put it, It is

believed that the serial will mislead and have a bad influence on young people,

while promoting an updated version of hippiedom and glorifying money

worship (Angie). Beijings 2002 ban had little real effect, however, on the

popularity of F4 and Meteor Garden. As of 2006 when the author visited the

Chinese capital, F4 paraphernalia were ubiquitous and pirated versions of the

complete series of Meteor Garden could be found in any DVD shop.

After Meteor Garden, F4 became the pop group they are today and their

group and solo albums have met with great success despite noticeably limited

singing skills (Chua Conceptualizing 210). In the PRC and elsewhere, their

public appearances draw mass crowds of screaming fans, as exemplified by

one incident in a Shanghai shopping center: the appearance had to be cut short

by ten minutes due to the crushing crowd, and local authorities subsequently

cancelled the boy bands scheduled concert (210). Their burning popularity has

scored F4 sponsorship deals with such brand names as Pepsi, Yamaha, and

Siemens mobile phones, making their faces even more ubiquitously visible on

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billboards, visual and print media advertisements, and soda cans (McClure et al

1).

Jay Chou. Jay Chou appeared on the Taiwanese pop scene in 2000 with

his first album Jay, although he had been writing songs for other singers before

then (Wikipedia Jay Chou). Although he did not have the typical good looks of

a Mandopop star, his musical talent was clear and his R&B-style pop songs

extremely refreshing for the Mandarin pop music industry. His sound had not

been heard before in the Mandopop world. In the insta-pop industry of

prepackaged icons that is the Mando- and Canto-pop music scene, a not-so-

handsome music talent like Jay is a rarity, and thats why he became so

successful in Asia (Drake Cool Jay). "Even when my female fans approach me,

they don't tell me that I'm handsome," Chou explains. "They tell me they like my

music. It's my music that has charmed them." (Cool Jay)

Since his debut in 2000, Jay has released six albums, the first five of

which all went triple platinum in Taiwan and mainland China, Hong Kong,

Malaysia and Singapore (Cool Jay; Keane The Chinese Pop King). Some

argue that, in terms of album sales and concerts, he is currently the most

popular singer in contemporary China (qtd. in Otmazgin Cultural

Commodities). As another attestation to his immense popularity, Jay has been

deemed the Small Heavenly King by Hong Kong media, a serious title which

refers back to four canto-pop superstars from the 1990s, the Big Heavenly

Kings, (Keane The Chinese Pop King). Like F4, Jay has endorsement deals

with big brand name companies such as Pepsi (China) and Panasonic (Cool

Jay). He has also scored high-profile acting gigs due to his popularity as a pop

singer. In 2005, he played a lead role in Initial D, a movie about hip young

racecar drivers. Following that successful acting debut, famed mainland

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Chinese director Zhang Yimou courted him for his 2006 movie Curse of the

Golden Flower (Wikipedia Jay Chou).

At the 11th Chinese Music Chart Awards held in Shanghai in 2005, five

years after his debut, Jay took away four titles the most of the night including

Best Male Singer in the Taiwan and Hong Kong Region, Most Popular Male

Singer, Best Singer-Songwriter, and Best Song. Since the awards are

determined by the people of China through online voting, these music awards

illustrate Chows popularity in the PRC (Peoples Daily Jay Chow tops Chinese

music chart awards). His song Snail was also recently included as one of 100

patriotic songs compiled by the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission to

teach patriotism to middle school students in the Shanghai area (China Daily

Patriotic Songs).

A-Mei. A-Mei is another Taiwanese superstar whose real talent has kept

her going strong in the Mandopop music industry for roughly a decade. She has

an interesting background as a Taiwanese aborigine, a member of the Puyuma

Tribe from the mountainous eastern region of Taiwan. Though she looks Han

Chinese, her exposure to tribal music growing up provided A-Mei with a deeply

soulful voice which, like Jays musical talent, is rare in the Mandopop scene. A-

Mei first broke into the industry by winning a national singing competition in

Taiwan in 1994. She has since released fifteen albums, and her popularity has

yet to wane. She has made the cover of TimeAsia and Newsweek, and CNN has

made a documentary about her (Wikipedia A-Mei).

A-Meis career has been complicated by cross-strait politics probably

more than any other Mandopop artist. In 1999, she performed in Beijing and

Shanghai, her first concerts in China. It was then very hard to get a booking in

China but A-Mei was able to because Beijing wanted to co-opt A-mei's

popularity as a way to legitimize its claim over Taiwan (Mahlon Back in the

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Spotlight). At her performance, A-Mei was called an ethnic minority of China, a

citizen of the diverse and harmonious PRC. Her Shanghai concert drew 80,000

attendees (Wikipedia A-Mei). But real political conflict lay ahead. When pro-

independence DPP candidate Chen Shui-bian won the 2000 presidential

election in Taiwan, he invited A-Mei to sing the Taiwanese national anthem at his

inauguration. She said of the invitation: The president felt I could represent so many people, and I would never have another

chance," she says. Neither she nor her record company considered the political

consequences. "I had sung the national anthem since I was a girl," says A-mei. "I never

expected anything to come of it." (Mahlon Spotlight)

However, her separatist performance enraged Beijing, and she was promptly

banned from China. China also removed her ad campaigns with Sprite on the

mainland (Asiaweek Amazing A-Mei) It was a rocky point in her career. But a

year later, the ban was lifted, and A-Mei was once again performing in the

Mainland to numerous screaming fans (TimeAsia Both Sides Now). A-Meis

ethnicity and her immense popularity on both sides of the Strait unfortunately

make her a political pawn in the standoff between Taiwan and China, a topic I

will return to below.

In addition to F4 and Meteor Garden, Jay Chou, and A-Mei, numerous

other Taiwanese pop stars are popular in the PRC. For instance, the female lead

in Meteor Garden, Barbie Hsu (more commonly known as Big S or Da S S)

was extremely famous in Taiwan prior to her role in the TV series. She and her

sister Little S (Xiao S S; the sisters are collectively known as ASOS) started

out as a pop duo in the early 90s, but they quickly became TV show hosts as

their real talent lay in their quirky and energetic hosting personalities. The

popular sisters easily became trendsetters, which they remain to this day. Big S

is now a well-known personality in mainland China (Wikipedia Barbie Hsu).

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Another popular Taiwanese singer in mainland China is Jolin Tsai, or Tsai Yi-ling.

A girl who started out as a teenage pop singer in 1999, she became extremely

popular with the release of her 5th album Magic in 2003, after she signed with

Sony BMG. Since then, she has been winning awards all over Greater China

(Wikipedia Jolin Tsai). Lastly, S.H.E. is a female pop group from Taiwan which

has also garnered widespread popularity in mainland China. There are three

members: Selina, Hebe, and Ella, whose names make up the acronym. On a

recent tour of the PRC, S.H.E. set a new concert sales record at the Shanghai

Peoples Stadium (Wikipedia S.H.E.).

As another example of the influential nature of Taiwanese pop culture in

the PRC, the language usage and accent of Taiwan-style Mandarin is

considered very hip in the PRC and is emulated by many young mainlanders.

Evidence of this trend can be seen from the following statement by a PRC youth:

We talk like Hong Kong and Taiwan stars, dress in the fashion of South Korean

stars, wear the expression of European or American stars and fall in love like

they do in Japanese movies and TV series. (Yang 177) Particularly for women,

the Taiwanese way of speaking Mandarin is considered very cute as well as

fashionable. The common language of Mandarin has been one of the reasons

why Taiwanese pop culture has always made such an easy hop over to the

mainland, and in fact, terms from Taiwanese and Hong Kong usage have

become part of the PRC vocabulary in the past (Wong Taiwan Unseats Hong

Kong). In 1990, a dictionary was published in the mainland of Taiwanese and

Hong Kong terms which could often be heard through the conduit of popular

culture (Barme 125). In 2005, Professor Yao Ying from the Huazhong University

of Science and Technology produced A study of the infiltration of popular terms

from Hong Kong and Taiwan, revealing that, fifteen years later, the trend had

not ceased. In another example, in September of 2005, the CCP Broadcasting

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Bureau issued to television and radio broadcasters a so-called Pact of Self-

Discipline (zilu gongyue ), which specified that the broadcasters

should restrain themselves from using popular Hong Kong and Taiwan

colloquialisms or accents during broadcasts (Xinhua Guangdian zongju).

Apparently Hong Kong and Taiwanese language usage had become so popular,

it was a problem.

In conclusion, in the new millennium, Taiwan has remained a center of

pop culture creation and continues to influence the mainland in this respect as

much, if not more so, than in the past. Various developments have contributed

to its continued popularity. Since the Hong Kong handover of 1997, for instance,

Mandarin has gained greater prominence in the pop culture industry, as Hong

Kongs new position as a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the PRC has

increased the importance of the Mandarin dialect in the SAR (Wong Taiwan).

This linguistic shift has signaled the decline in the Cantopop industry and a

corresponding elevation or expansion of the Mandopop industry. Taiwan has

since become the locus of Mandopop music in Asia, now the dominant form of

Chinese pop (Chua Conceptualizing 208). A 1999 Billboard interview of

various top executives in the Asian entertainment industry also reveals the

importance Taiwan had at the dawn of the new millennium: Taiwan is the creative centerfor the Chinese music market.

- Matthew Elison, President, EMI Music Asia Until theres a larger legitimate market in ChinaTaiwan will remain the commercial and creative center...

- Norman Cheng, Chairman, Universal Music Asia In another article, the author writes that the first step to access the massive

mainland market the goal of most in the Greater China pop culture sphere

is to first become successful in Taiwan (Wong Taiwan).

Taiwan has also remained at the center of the pop culture industry

because its products, including music, clothing styles, and even linguistic styles,

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have continued to appeal to mainland youth and the youth of Chinese

communities in Southeast Asia. In the essay Popular Culture among Chinese

Youth, published in 2006, Yang Changzheng points out that As in other

periods after 1978the US, Hong Kong and Taiwan are still the most important

places of origin forpopular culture in the Chinese mainland. (177)

A survey concerning star worship revealed that, of the youth surveyed, 31.6%

worshipped stars from Taiwan and Hong Kong, taking the highest percentage

of all the choices: roughly 28% idolized foreign stars and only 6.2% idolized

mainland Chinese stars (177). This last statistic suggests that the PRC has not

yet produced a pop culture industry of its own which can rival the peripheral

centers of culture such as Taiwan. In a related vein of thought, China still lags

far behind Taiwan in economic development, and the middle- to upper-class

lifestyle of relatively developed Taiwan probably is one factor that continues to

be a source of cool in the perception of mainland Chinese youth. This logic

was the same twenty years ago, when pop cultural commodities from Taiwan

were first becoming popular in the PRC.

Conclusions and Implications

So far, this paper has illustrated how over more than two decades,

Taiwanese pop culture has been very influential in defining what is trendy in the

PRC. The massive popularity of Taiwanese popular culture on the mainland,

from music to linguistics, is certainly a form of soft power that Taiwan has over

the mainland. This soft power serves as a counterbalance to the PRCs hard

power dominance concerning cross-strait affairs in the international arena. But

how strong is this soft power? And how would its strengths translate into the

hard power arena? I explore these questions below.

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Many observers look at this soft power vs. hard power cross-strait

competition and declare that the soft power is really no power at all. Their

arguments are valid and deserve a close look. Chua Beng Huat provides one of

the most convincing arguments in his essay East Asian Pop Culture: Consumer

Communities and the Politics of the National, in which he makes several

arguments against the power of pop culture in the face of the hard power of

politics. One of his arguments is that popular culture is by nature ephemeral;

consumers tastes change from one month or year to the next, and thus soft

power has no fixed staying power (35): The different consumption communities of East Asian pop culture are inherently unstable.

Membership will always be unstable and ever changing, as one fan grows out of it, a

new one inducts him/herself, in quick succession; a process augmented by the rapid

rise and fall of a constant stream of idols and/or drama series. (38)

Chua also makes the point that if the consumer communities of a certain pop

culture are pitted against the non-consumer community of that particular form

of pop culture, the consumer community is inherently smaller, weaker, and

cannot win out against the non-consumers: In such a confrontation, the non-consumer population, designating itself as the people

on account of its overwhelming majority, can readily form a coalition with the nation-

state, in the name of nationalism, against the communities of consumers. (38)

Chua uses the example of A-Meis ban from the PRC in 2000. Beijing was able

to cancel all of her contracts in the PRC and essentially close the Chinese

market off to her (38). Chua concludes that nationalist politics trap consumer

communities and their ability to influence the larger political sphere is

severely stunted, (40).

Still others such as Lu Hsiao-peng believe that the Chinese state can

successfully co-opt popular culture so as to reinforce its dominance (166). She

believes that Beijing did so successfully in the 80s and 90s, when Taiwanese

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pop culture became so popular in the mainland (151). In this example, Taiwans

soft power only serves to strengthen Beijings hard power.

As another argument against the strength of Taiwans soft power, the

strong sense of nationalism amongst PRC youth serves to weaken Taiwans soft

power in the event of hard power conflict. According to a 2004 national survey

of college students organized by the China Youth and Children Research Center,

91.9% of those surveyed said they would contribute to any anti-secession efforts

or resistance to foreign aggression (Xu 85). This statistic points to the high level

of nationalism amongst Chinese youth, particularly as regards Chinese

sovereignty and the Taiwan Province issue. If the appeal of Taiwanese pop

culture had to butt heads with Chinese nationalism, there is good reason to

believe that nationalism would win out.

However, Taiwans soft power is not null and void. It indeed has influence,

even in the hard power arena. Some observers even believe that in the long run,

Taiwans soft power has considerable influence. Thomas B. Gold writes that

Taiwanese popular culture on the mainland is a central component of peaceful

evolution (273), and the messages of individuality and feelings, while not

challenging the CCP directly, create a zone of indifference. (272). Over the

long-term this indifference can be corrosive to the states legitimacy, and

combined with all the other challenges faced by China, could seriously weaken

the CCPs hold on power (273). This analysis does not look at cross-strait

relations per se, however, it does show how soft power could gradually erode

hard power domestically in the PRC, and by extension in the cross-strait

situation. Tu Wei-mings idea of the center vs. periphery also illustrates his belief

in the strength of Taiwans soft power: It is unprecedented for the geopolitical center to remain entrenched while the periphery

presents such powerful and persistent economic and cultural challengesEither the center

19

will bifurcate or, as is more likely, the periphery will come to set the economic and cultural

agenda for the center, thereby undermining its political effectiveness. (qtd. in Gold 271).

Taiwans soft power also has political efficacy. Lets look at the strength of

Taiwans soft power in the here and now, and not its possible ability to topple

the CCP over the long-term. First, in response to Chuas point of the ephemeral

nature of popular culture, that may be true of individual artists and fads,

however, in the cross-strait situation, the coolness of Taiwanese popular

culture in general has not faded in the PRC over the years. The overall nature of

the appeal of Taiwan pop culture has remained quite steady. Secondly, A-Meis

ban from the mainland can also illustrate the extent of Taiwans soft power within

the past few years. In another earlier essay of Chuas, he puts forward a

viewpoint of the situation different from the first one mentioned, which is still

valid. He writes that after the ban: Changs popularity among her PRC fans continued unabated and she was finally

allowed to return to perform in the PRC after having performed during the 2001

government supported trade union May Day celebration in Singapore and a charity

show in Hong Kong in August the same year. The singer, buoyed by her fans across the

ethnic Chinese dominant locations in East Asia, appeared to be beyond the clutches of

the state and, in fact, able to bring the latter to capitulation. (Conceptualizing 218);

(Italics mine)

This rapid banning and un-banning of A-Mei seems to reveal that the CCP could

actually have something to lose in an extended ban of the Taiwanese singer.

Especially considering that A-Mei was not openly defiant after her inauguration

performance, her subsequent actions did not exacerbate any violations of

Chinese nationalist pride that her performance might have affected at first.

According to Chua, she did not lose popularity with her fans. If the CCP

continued to enforce the ban, it could have subtly alienated a segment of the

youth population in China, thereby decreasing its legitimacy in their eyes. On a

20

subtle level and small scale, the CCP may have allowed A-Mei back to keep a

segment of its young citizens happy and integrated.

In the same line of thought, it is reasonable to believe that popular

Taiwanese stars do have the potential to influence public opinion in the PRC. In

the case of a hard-power tension, threat of conflict, or even real conflict between

China and Taiwan, Taiwanese stars could make an appeal to de-escalate the

situation, and, under certain conditions, could successfully sway public opinion

in the PRC, influencing the CCPs actions. The conditions for success would be

1) the threat would have to be real enough to constitute a threat to the stars

themselves, their homes, or their families, 2) the appeal would have to be made

humbly, so as not to upset Chinese nationalist sentiments, 3) the communication

would have to be able to reach the Chinese public, which, with the CCPs

censoring capabilities, could possibly pose a difficulty. Furthermore, there is

evidence that the CCP responds to public opinion in the creation of important

policies; popular online forums are monitored by the government to gauge

public opinion on important issues, and the feedback has been incorporated

into the governments response to those issues (Brady 168). Thus, it is not

unreasonable to believe in the power of the Chinese public.

In conclusion, Taiwanese popular cultural has enjoyed vast popularity in

the PRC for roughly two decades. This form of soft-power is extensive and

deeply-rooted, and though it in no way overrides hard power in the equation of

the cross-strait conundrum, it still has influence, which under the right

circumstances, can be far-reaching. It is indeed a soft power with hard power

potential.

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