No individual or organisation is allowed to provide the songs, which “trumpeted obscenity, violence, crime or harmed social morality”, the Ministry of Culture said in a statement yesterday.
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The listing incorporates Chinese language-language songs, and a few are by family names in China, together with Taiwanese pop singer Chang Csun Yuk and Taiwanese actor Stanley Huang.
The ministry announced that if website administrators are caught not removing these songs, they will have to face “severe punishment”. The extensive list also includes work by local bands and popular musicians from Asia.
Including titles such as “Beijing Hooligans“, “Don’t Want to Go to School” and “Suicide Diary“, the banned songs were described as “having severely problematic content”, which violated an online cultural management regulation, according to a a ministry statement.
The list, which apparently was only published on the Mandarin Xinhua website and not in English, includes a variety of 120 songs by Chinese and Taiwanese artists.
There has been a mixed reaction to the list in China, with people taking to social media to voice their opinions.
“Thanks to the Ministry of Culture for giving me a list of songs to listen to”, one Weibo user commented.
China’s authoritarian government regularly attempts to tighten control over content that it says disturbs social stability.
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This ban is part of the Communist Party’s massive censorship system – dubbed the Great Firewall – that aggressively blocks sites or snuffs out content and commentary that is pornographic, violent or deemed politically sensitive, The Strait Times clarifies. As a result, internet users in mainland China have no access sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
