China Turns to Rap to Promote Policies at Home and Abroad

WASHINGTON - Four decades after The Sugarhill Gang broke out of the Bronx house party music scene to go global with Rapper’s Delight, the Chinese Communist Party is busting rhymes with “red raps.” "Open the door to Fort Detrick, Shed light on tightly held secret..." This RAP song speaks our minds. pic.twitter.com/YWRL0s4EE0

Eager to make inroads with youth at home and abroad, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has embraced rap, a sometimes-X-rated hallmark of America’s Black culture, as a way to advance its positions on controversial issues such as Tibet and COVID-19 origin theories. “Promoting rap not only helps build the image that the party is modern, but also encourages young people to express their nationalism in a way that is accessible to them,” said Sarah Cook, an expert on media freedom in China and a researcher at Freedom House, a nongovernmental think tank in Washington. After The Rap of Tibet went viral on China’s tightly controlled social media this summer, Chinese state media on Aug. 19 posted the paean to Beijing taking control of the Himalayan nation in 1951 on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook in an effort to influence young people outside China. Beijing blocks its domestic audience from those platforms with the Great Firewall.