POPULAR Taiwanese singer, Yoga Lin, saw the lyrics of three songs in his latest album, “Fiction,” removed in July in return for government permission to release the album on the mainland.

    The heartthrob’s songs, “Love More Regardless of Resistance,” “Weekend Night Shock” and “No. 4 Sickroom,” were released on the mainland as instrumentals, triggering a heated discussion on the Internet about the mainland’s inexplicably strict censorship of imported recordings.

    “In the past, music recordings were censored by the Ministry of Culture, which usually appointed between 40 and 50 experts to do the job. Each expert was tasked to review one album. That means, the approval of only one expert was needed for the release of an album,” the Southern Metropolis Daily reported, quoting Zhou Xiao-chuan, boss of Starsing Records, a large Guangzhou-based record company.

    Starsing Records produces and imports more than 70 percent of mainland and overseas recordings sold on the mainland market.

    In the wake of the Beijing Olympics in 2008, the ministry passed the censoring baton to the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP), according to Zhou.

    “The GAPP employs a more time-consuming and complicated censoring procedure. The GAPP calls a meeting each month to re-examine the latest albums after each has been analyzed by an expert. The album will not receive a pass if any expert at the meeting says no,” said Zhou.

    “Usually, it will take a month and a half for an album to pass the censorship process. But sometimes it takes more than two months,” said Zhou.

    It is never made entirely clear what the criteria for censorship are. “I have been involved in submitting albums to censors for many years, but I’m still unaware of the criteria. It seems to simply depend on luck,” said Zhou.

    The China manager of Universal Music, Zhang Yue, a Taiwanese, is even more confused than Zhou about the criteria.

    “We are never told why our albums fail to get past the censors. And once they do fail there is nothing we can do about it,” complained Zhang.

    Many recording companies in Taiwan are in the same boat. When Jolin Tsai, a popular female singer in Taiwan, was ready to release an album, “Spy J,” on the mainland in 2007, censors asked to remove the word “Spy” from the album’s title. Meanwhile, the first song on the album, “Spy J” was also required to be changed.

    When it comes to foreign albums, getting through uncensored is almost impossible.

    Zhou’s company had planned to introduce the album, “Believe,” by Canadian pop star Justin Bieber. However, when censors found the word “ bitch” in a song, they failed it.

    Zhou said, unlike Chinese producers, foreign producers, who can’t totally understand China’s censorship, flatly refuse to change the lyrics.

    Finally, Zhou’s company gave up introducing “Believe” to the mainland, which sold well in other parts of the world.

    As a solution, some agencies who claim to have inside knowledge have offered to help record companies in Taiwan and Hong Kong pass the censorship process promptly, said the Southern Metropolis Daily, citing an undefined insider.

    “If something is deemed wrong with the lyrical content of an album, it is impossible to get it approved with or without a so-called connection,” said Zhou.

    More challenging to recording companies, as of last year, they have to register with the Ministry of Culture to acquire permission to sell their records or promote them on the Internet.

    Zhou said the GAPP’s online censorship still has many loopholes because all the banned songs can be downloaded at some sites.(Martin Li)