UCLA

This thesis will examine the presence of Jay Chou’s China Wind (Zhongguofeng), a term describing a style of Chinese popular music that incorporates Chinese elements, in the PRC during the first decade of the 21st century. Despite the fact that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has ceaselessly implemented strategies in attempts to subvert the fact that songs from Hong Kong and Taiwan dominated the mainland’s popular music space at this time, Jay Chou, who is from Taiwan, surprisingly received their endorsement. This thesis will attempt to answer why the aforementioned phenomenon occurred and simultaneously answer why Jay Chou’s China Wind is tremendously popular in the PRC. Rather than regarding the CCP’s strategies as a complete failure against songs from Hong Kong and Taiwan, this thesis argues that Jay Chou’s China Wind style is fundamentally different from those songs in terms of ideology. From there, this thesis argues that Jay Chou’s China Wind style is in accordance with both the CCP’s ideological agenda and PRC consumers’ tastes and desires from the perspectives of gender, nationalism, and modernization. Lastly, this thesis argues that Jay Chou’s China Wind allows the PRC government and consumers to form a symbiotic, rather than antagonistic, relationship.