Can a Chinese pop star make it big in the west? Rising tensions between China and western nations suggest not. But the thousands of fans who have flocked to gigs by Jackson Wang in London and Paris this month indicate otherwise.
Jackson Wang performs at the Coachella Music & Arts Festival at the Empire Polo Club on Saturday, April 16, 2022, in Indio, Calif. In 2011, the Chinese government partnered with a Shanghai entertainment company to launch the Earth’s Music project, a 10-year plan to create a global pop star. A singer called Ruhan Jia was recruited for the post in 2014. Classically trained – she appeared in the UK world premiere of Damon Albarn’s opera Monkey: Journey To The West in 2007 – Ruhan underwent a crash course in western pop, studiously listening to Michael Jackson and Queen.
“At least 66 artists of Chinese descent have become K-pop idols,” said Sun Meicheng of Beijing Language and Culture University, a specialist in the close but prickly association between K-pop and China. She traces the first Chinese idol to a Mandopop singer called Han Geng who joined the Korean boy band Super Junior in 2005.The world’s most populous nation is a critical market for K-pop, despite episodes of friction.
And if you are going to talk about kpop as if they are the pioneers of idol groups why not talk about how kpops roots have taken from western culture. Let’s not act like kpop invented what they are doing now.
The problem is you are boxing him exclusively to his Nationally, he is clearly a global star with a worldwide background.
He is proud to be Chinese, yes but that’s not all that he is. Why don’t you mentioned how many times he says Asians; and not just Chinese.
Worst article I have read. “But despite his patriotic protestations, he owes more to South Korea for his western success than to China” Everything they asked him he goes far and beyond to express his love for Korean culture and the company who made him who he is.