By Larry Ong, Epoch Times | July 22, 2015
Last Updated: July 22, 2015 11:13 am
Taylor Swift accepts the Milestone Award onstage during the 50th Academy Of Country Music Awards at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas on April 19, 2015. (Cooper Neill/Getty Images)
Taylor Swift might have unwittingly stumbled into politically fraught territory in China with her latest business venture: the singer-songwriter intends to bring to the country her line of branded clothing and merchandise that features the slogan: “T.S. 1989.”
To the millions of Chinese who spot the slogan, it will immediately call to mind the Tiananmen Square Massacre of June 4, 1989, a major political taboo in communist China.
The clothing line is intended to be launched next month, in cooperation with the e-commerce giant JD.com. Images available so far indicate that the Chinese line will carry “1989” emblazoned on t-shirts, dresses, and trinkets—whether the initials will precede the year is unclear.
Promotional material for Taylor Swift’s “1989” clothing line in China. (Screen shot)
In a promotional video posted on China’s microblogging site Sina Weibo, Swift, a seven-time Grammy Award winner, greeted her fans in Chinese. The video also featured several models and Swift wearing the new merchandise.
The date “1989” refers to Swift’s latest album, her upcoming live tour, and her birth year.
The date also happens to have special significance in China—it’s the year of the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4, where hundreds of students advocating democratic reform were killed when troops opened fire on them on orders of hardline Chinese Communist Party elders.
Following the slaughter, Party leaders sought to wipe Tiananmen from the nation’s collective memory by suppressing and censoring all references to the traumatic event, and by harassing and imprisoning those who publicly discussed it. As a result, old and young Chinese citizen alike are strongly averse to talking about what happened in 1989; many young Chinese aren’t even aware of the cause of the protests or the extent of the killing.
MORE:For Chinese, the Tiananmen Square Massacre Is Still Too Taboo to Talk About
Today, the Chinese regime remains extremely sensitive to all references to Tiananmen Square behind the Great Firewall. Censors will remove combinations of the numbers “89,” “6,” and “4”—the protest’s year and date—on Chinese social media sites. Chinese netizens have gotten around the numbers by posting coded substitutes like “May 35.”
It is unclear if Swift is aware of the connection between her clothing line and tour, and Tiananmen Square. Messages to her official Twitter account and publicist were unanswered at the time of writing.
Swift has thus far avoided China’s censors—her Shanghai tour is still on, and JD.com still carries her album.
Musicians and celebrities have been known to run afoul of the Chinese regime. Saxophonist Kenny G deleted a picture of himself at an Occupy protests site in Hong Kong during the height of the pro-democracy Umbrella Movement in October last year. Chinese media too carried reports that Hollywood and Hong Kong movie starChow Yun-fat and other Hong Kong celebrities who voiced support for the movement had their commercial prospects on the mainland reduced, according to Radio France Internationale.
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1471143-will-china-censor-taylor-swifts-1989-clothing-line/
