The Beatles played in the Cavern Club, not the Cellar Club, although the Cavern Club was indeed below ground level. The possible source of the confusion might be the title of Brian Epstein's biography and a line from Petula Clark's "I Know A Place" which are both "A Cellar Full of Noise."

In the USSR, rock and roll records were so banned and precious that old Xrays of WWII injuries were carved into circles and used to make forbidden records. A form of samizdat, so to speak, and I believe there was a Russian word used to refer to these bootlegs, calling them the equivalent of "bones." Wikipedia has this about that:

'The Soviet-era "bones" [?????], "ribs" [?????] or "roentgenizdat" [????????????] are so-called because one cheap, reliable source of suitable raw material is discarded medical x-rays, which have the added benefit of including ready-made and interesting images. The name roentgenizdat comes from the combination of roentgen ray (another word for X-ray) and izdat (Russian: ?????, abbr. ????????????, izdatel’stvo, “publishing house”), patterned after the word samizdat ("self-published", or underground literature). X-ray records emerged at the time of the Stilyagi as an underground medium for distribution of jazz music, which was prohibited in the Soviet Union after World War II. This format was also particularly attractive to politically suppressed punk rock music and the "do it yourself" punk ethic, since other publishing outlets were much less accessible.'

The points made here about how creative art actually happens are trenchant in the extreme. What will probably open up China is what really undermined the USSR... that same desire for something actually GOOD culturally. The leadership thinks they can have it both ways, run a closed, controlled culture and have bold innovators. A free lunch in other words. Ain't no.

I think this is pretty much right: Hu is fighting a losing battle. And if he persists in this fight he will go down in history as a figure of ridicule.

This may seem unrelated, but just recently there’s been a dust-up over the ultra-orthodox in Israel decorating their kids with the yellow Nazi “Jude” star to protest against the civil rights of women. It’s not the antifeminism that bothers the critics but rather the trivialization of the holocaust. What those critics and most others who are outraged at the (ab)use of Nazi symbolism and holocaust iconography do not understand is that there are two holocausts: the historical event and the pop culture phenomenon.

I have been researching holocaust cinema for the last few years and am intrigued by the extent of the discourse on representations of the holocaust -- especially the idea that there is only one way to represent it, or that it shouldn't be represented at all. There is just no understanding of the fickle relationship between signifier and signified -- no understanding that there is no One True Story of the holocaust, not even among Jews.

The holocaust belongs to popular culture now, and whether that means more (good and bad) movies about it or the use of Nazi iconography by protesters to make a point, we are just going to have to get used to it because it’s not gonna stop. The more the “purists” complain about it, the more they invite ridicule.

China won't become a source of popular culture that attracts a global audience until it's willing to allow artists to work without fear of state meddling. China has plenty of artists who do take chances -- think Ai Weiwei, Zhang Yimou and the writer of the online novella that was made into the gay romance film "Lanyu" -- but they all work under constant threat of state repression.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong and Taiwan have produced all kinds of popular culture, much of which has also reached Western audiences, such as Hong Kong movies and Taiwan's Next Media Animation. Also, Hong Kong and Taiwanese pop singers remain very popular among mainland Chinese audiences, as do television programs like the variety/comedy show "KangXi Lai Le," which often features off-color humor and includes an openly gay co-host, Cai Kangyong.

..I'm a little disappointed this post didn't contain a detailed interpretation on how Rowling's protagonists are evil capitalists.

"Forgive me, but China's leader sounds a lot like a stodgy high school principal trying to stop teenagers from wearing gangsta rap T-shirts, and telling the Music Department to get more kids into the marching band instead."

Wrong analogy. Chinese as a people is not any kind of teenagers. The Chinese people have seen a lot a heard a lot. Hu was not trying to force creativity. Rather he was trying to tell the people to pay more attention to what is cultural good and what is cultural harmful per China's value. As Ai being creative, it is 100% political. He is only creative to the extent that he is a dissident useful for China bashing. May be a little better than the once view that "the only good Chinese is a dead Chinese". Otherwise nothing new.

For trying. My take away from his comments [assuming them to be a correct and accurate and nuanced translation] is that he is simply saying turn the volume down and asking people to pay more attention to deeper cultural concerns. Popular, for popular, read consumerist, ephemeral, Coca-cola, Disney culture, entertainment may meet some people's definition of culture. But all nations, if they have a state to act through, place limits on expression. It depends upon where you draw the line. Reagan erased lines of constraint in public discourse by ending the fairness doctrine for electronic media and we have now seen the effects of no constraints and an electronic media that is deranged nearly deracinated and the people who form their opinions based upon what they hear and see are similarly deracinated. Now, the supreme court of the US has removed constraints on money as expression and we will see a presidential auction rather than an election. So you cannot fault the man for trying to maintain some sense of order. It may be a faulty metaphor but just as cars need brakes, so too do cultures and nations and states.

id be more concerned with islamofascism....its far more dangerous that china having issue with harry potter. ahhhh yes, walts priorities...

It is likely that Hu Jintao’s concern is primarily with Western popular culture devoid of moral dimension. Much Western entertainment is not only lacking in this respect but is decidedly degenerate. It is not art, art cannot be degenerate, it is degenerate entertainment and as pernicious as radiation poisoning. It is counter productive to attempt too seriously to ban it but there is no earthly reason why an authority with the means to do so shouldn’t encourage alternatives. The contention that this is not practical is simply not sound or Athens would not have produced Aeschylus or Sophocles. Other examples of states encouraging high art are too numerous to mention. The Chinese PM is presumably signalling that local talent should be provided greater recourse to training and facilities, art and writing colleges and courses etc. This would imply a change of educational emphasis entirely appropriate for him to announce.

Quite apart from that perspective, it is important for China’s economic health that it encourage self sufficiency, and popular entertainment must represent a large deluge of currency that could profitably be retained.

Solzhenitzin deserves acclaim. His "One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich" is very good. His latter novels were not that good. Mikhail Sholokov's Don novels were superb. He is not really given much credit because he was a CP official that ruled the writers guild for the Soviet Union for many years.

The point here is that much creativity is judged by political consideration. How else is it possible that Bernhard Henri Levi is considered a great philosopher. Creativity? Not likely.

Brush up on your Chomsky Stephen. The culture war is universal and it's being fought to control the space between our ears. Hu represents a different faction.

Our elites are more sophisticated but they play the same game.

I'd say your obliviousness to your sorroundings is the more telling aspect of this post.

Assuming you don't watch very much TV, force yourself. Tell me if you don't feel utterly degraded after a few dozen hours of what's fed to the rabble. There's a reason that TV will be dead in ten years: it's become unbelievably toxic.

And now our own cultural warriors are engaged in a campaign to push into yet another war on false pretenses.

But that is not to say filling China's tubes with Jersey Shore and American idol knockoffs is a good thing.

Every time a specialist makes an attempt to tackle something not within his area of expertise, he risks giving, and often does give, an ignorant and laughable treatment of the subject he dabbles as an aspiring dilettante, while making a clown of himself.

If the author wants to talk about both the subjects of culture and China, shouldn't he at least know something about Chinese culture before he decides to foolhardily mock, and plunge to conclusion, about this object that, other than contempt, he shows no appreciation for?

The war is not about culture. It is about ideology, and culture items are just a type of munitions for waging it. By arguing that China needs to let go of control in order to counter the cultural influence of the West, the author is also using his piece as fodder to attack China's ideology. In which case, the author is not mistaken at all, since he is simply doing his job as a mouthpiece for a "global", read "imperial propaganda", magazine.

Though the author is wrong about the nature of the war, he is right, unfortunately, about who is losing. And it is entirely of the losing side's own making.

The history of Chinese culture is as long and as rich as its Western counterpart, which is only on a comparable level if you coalesce every culture that has ever existed on the European and later North American continent into one, the Greeks', the Romans', and the barbarians'.

Yet, while the Western culture rides on the unbroken tide flowing from antiquity to the present, China, because of its once undisputed preeminence was eclipsed in recent times by the gunboats and infantry of the West, systematically rebuked, in the last couple of hundred years, its own culture as well as nearly every one of its other achievements made in its history. The result is a population willing to swallow anything, ideological, cultural, or spiritual, as long as it is not from China.

Thus China put itself at an disadvantage entering the war. And it has not made any effort to get itself out of it.

It is right of the President (not Premier. Hu is the President; Wen is the Premier) to profess his hope that China should fight the war of ideology, a war of propaganda, more effectively, and more actively. Instead of enduring the barrage of attacks from the Western media, such as this magazine, China should build up its own weaponry, techniques, tactics, and strategies. That is, China, as much as the distaste and disinterest it has for the game of imperial propaganda, is better off to play the game to win it than to passively doing damage control.

And government can do much to foster and promote culture, as well as academics, both instrumental tools for ideological propaganda, which the Americans should know better than anyone else. America uses capitalism, i.e. money, as the life blood to suckle its production of cultural items and their producers. The result is market-oriented, i.e. people-oriented, entertainment that, though vulgar, is also popular, designed for the populace to lap them up, so the originators can cash in. There are always alternatives to such market economy, and China has several options to counter this narcotic entertainment, or so called "culture".

The best way is to first come clean itself, abjuring the past practices of rebuking everything traditional, especially culture and ideology, stopping exploiting traditional culture for its domestic propaganda purpose, and appealing to the ideals cherished by the forefathers of the nation which are yet to be completely extinguished from people today.

It would be an uphill battle, going against the sensual, base yet paramountly powerful, part of human nature. But it is the only way to counter the Western ideological influence without stooping as low as, or lower than, it is.

By the way, the picture you chose for your article is so blatantly taken of Japanese in Japan. The ignorance is as much idiotic as condescending.

"By the way, the picture you chose for your article is so blatantly taken of Japanese in Japan. The ignorance is as much idiotic as condescending."

The book shown is the English Language/British edition. Japan and China have their own translations. This could easily be NYC for all we know.

If this is Japan or China, then would the picture be in an English language bookstore?

Steve, is there an unwritten rule that at least half you posts must contain a slam of a Republican candidate no matter how irrelevant it is to the post?

Honestly, this just cheapens an otherwise solid posting.

Having immigrated from Taiwan to the states ~30 years ago when I was 14, my bi-cultural experience lets me to see Hu's intention and Prof. Walt's interpretation from both Chinese and Western points of view. In addition, the comment I posted here is distilled from my lifetime experience; however, my reaction to others' comments ARE also based (and biased) on my lifetime experience without taking into account of poster's background. Mindful of that disconnect (especially across a cultural divide), I'll just shed some anecdotal observation on how Chinese sees thing differently (not rightly or wrongly in absolute),

Governance:
Top-down parental style (in the west we called it authoritarian). In Chinese vernacular and historical context, government officials are traditionally called Fu-Mu-guan (or father-mother-officials). And people is refered to as Zi-Ming (children-people). Thus, Hu (a la CCP) was taken on the traditional role of people's parent.

Individual role:
Responsibility to others: when young, to the parents and teacher. At adulthood: to the offspring, boss, and filial piety. When old: to the offspring.

High-Culture:
A traditional learned-Chinese basics: the Four-books and Five-Classics (which cultivate and emphasize one's responsibility-to-society according to one's role, from commoner to emperor.)

When viewed from the Chinese background, Hu's decree (or admonishing) to its charge is comparable to a typical Chinese 'tiger-mom' household dynamics- strict, well-intended, understood and accepted by both the ruler and governed. When viewed from outside by non-Chinese, it's draconian and abusive.

Yes , art and artists resist control and the kind of excruciatingly fine-line that artists have to walk in china is crazy-making. They love the hoopla , power and money but get on the wrong side , like Weiwei and , feel the heavy boot of the state. I was surprised in doing some research lately that many of plein-aire school of landscape painting, kind of conservative, but with wide variety of approaches, revere the Russian academic landscape of the 30's and 40's , Romantic Impressionism. Who knew?
Also the Chinese posters of the 50's and 60's are great. My point is that maybe they are not recognizing what they are doing well. Certainly not encouraging art laboratories, communities, collaborations, except in speeches

many artists, poets and writers endured through severe travails during the history of Soviet Russia, and endured in isolation, anonymously, in small communities. I know this is happening in China as well, because it is happening here. The artists who achieve recognition are a small percentage of those working, persevering, in their work, without recognition. Artists do it because we must, even if only we can see it. The art market in the west is corrupted and tainted by money, hidden barters, and secret cartels that try to enrich those who are part of the deal. Sometimes the raw, vibrant energy from the streets echoes in the in salons of the moneyed-class, but often ends as just another scrap on the heap

It will give you another opportunity to claim special knowledge of a Jewish conspiracy to control the world.

This is reminiscent of Canadian efforts to avoid being overwhelmed by US culture. They may have a point. Porfirio Diaz is credited with once saying "Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States!" -- and even oceans are now less barriers to culture than ever.

TV drama based on time travel was hot in China last year. An earlier one was based on time travel to the Qin dynasty, a later one, Princess 1, on time travel to the Qing dynasty. A modern Chinese girl time traveled to the Qing dynasty and because a Qing princess. But Princess 1 was heavily criticized because it had a lot of historical errors and the story is not innovating. Some government official also complained. Their complaints led to CNN's article claiming, FALSELY, that time travel was banned in China.
http://business.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/14/china-bans-time-travel-for-television/
Princess 2 was released last October and it became the hotest TV drama with a lot of improvement. It is entertaining as well as thought provoking on current issuess such as freedom and power.

good ol' godwin's law...

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