Jolin Tsai Among List Of “Tainted Celebs” Whose Songs Were Reportedly Removed From KTV Playlists In China

The list of reportedly banned artists and activities in China appears to be growing longer and longer by the day as the government conducts an intense clean-up of “tainted celebrities”.

And now, the blacklist has supposedly expanded to karaoke rooms across the country.

Recently, photos of notices from two KTV outlets were circulated all over Weibo. One of them states that tracks from 21 ‘problematic’ singers have been removed from their catalogue “at the request of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism”, while the other is more heavy-handed and announces a purge of 1,376 songs from 47 singers.

Most of the names listed don’t exactly come as a surprise as they have hogged headlines for various misdeeds that are considered immoral, offensive, or straight-up criminal.

For instance, there’s Zhang Zhehan, whose career ended overnight after old photos of him posing in front of a controversial war shrine in Japan resurfaced; Vicki Zhao, whose exact wrongdoings are still unknown but resulted in her getting wiped from Chinese websites; and Kris Wu, who is currently awaiting his verdict after being accused of multiple sexual offences.

Vocal supporters of the Hongkong democratic movement like Anthony Wong and Denise Ho are also on the list, as are Show Luo, Andy Hui, and Edison Chen for their infidelities and/or sex scandals, and Kai Ko and Jaycee Chan, who were arrested on drug charges in 2014.

However, there’s one star whose inclusion has netizens scratching their heads: Taiwanese pop queen Jolin Tsai.

There is one possible explanation.

A few months ago, when the world was gripped by Olympics fever, Jolin was — very unfairly, we might add — accused of “insulting China” when all she did was cheer for the Taiwanese athletes, an act that was taken as a display of “pro-Taiwanese independence” by Chinese cyber-nationalists.

According to some netizens, when they tried to key in Jolin’s name into the machines at KTV outlets, the 41-year-old’s songs were indeed nowhere to be found, seemingly confirming the veracity of the news.

On the other hand, there were those who claimed that they had no trouble searching for her songs. They also pointed out that the Chinese state-controlled broadcaster CCTV still plays Jolin’s tracks, so there’s no way the reports could be true.

Some resourceful folks even reached out to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism directly to get to the bottom of things, and sure enough, the response was: “Our department has neither produced nor obtained the information that you are requesting (the blacklist). This government information does not exist.”

Photos: Jolin Tsai/Instagram, 瓜田花/Weibo, 国航空乘免税店代购/Weibo