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The Taiwanese rock band Mayday – ‘the Beatles of the Chinese-speaking world’ – are being investigated by the Chinese Communist party for the crime of lip syncing. Local authorities are combing through recordings of Mayday’s Shanghai concerts from November looking for evidence of ‘deceptive fake-singing’, as the CCP calls it, which has been illegal in China since 2009 (although the law is rarely enforced). Last month, an anonymous Taiwan-ese government source told Reuters that the investigation had been cooked up because the pop stars refused a request from Beijing to say something nice about China in the run-up to Taiwan’s election this Saturday. The band found itself at the centre of a row between the presidential hopefuls about Chinese interference.
Xi has made it clear that, whoever holds power in Taipei, reunification with Taiwan is his ‘unswerving task’
Lai Ching-te, the vice-president, the candidate for the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive party and the favourite to win, lambasted China for meddling in the election ‘if reports are true’.
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