Taiwan Bans Rapper for Calling Island Part of China

Taiwan has cancelled a planned Taipei concert by a Chinese rapper after he used the insulting term “Taipei, China” in promotional materials.

Wang Yitai’s scheduled Sept. 14 concert has been scrapped and the performer from the southwestern city of Chengdu banned from the island, the Taiwanese government’s Mainland Affairs Council announced late Sunday.

The term is insulating because it describes Taipei, the island's capital, as a Chinese city under Beijing’s rule, echoing the government’s position on eventually annexing Taiwan by force if necessary and denigrating the island’s lively democracy.

Not widely known outside China, Wang is signed to a rap label in Chengdu, a city with a lively arts scene that has become famous for eclectic performers and venues. Its also home to the rap group CD Rev, which won international notoriety for hard-line nationalist tracks including ones that compare Taiwan to the semi-autonomous Chinese city Hong Kong and made obscene and misogynist references to former President Tsai Ing-wen.

China regularly bans Taiwanese artists, many of whom are popular in the mainland, for any sign of support for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party that favors the island’s de-facto independence from China.

While Taiwan regularly welcomes Chinese artists and its government considers musical interactions in a positive light, the Mainland Affairs Council said that “cross-strait exchanges should be conducted based on the principles of reciprocity and mutual respect, and any publications or promotions that belittle Taiwan’s status will not be tolerated."

While Taiwan’s official name is the Republic of China, after the government that fled to the island in 1950 amid civil war, it is widely known simply as Taiwan, and competes at the Olympics as “Chinese Taipei” in deference to Beijing, whose pressure has reduced the island's number of formal diplomatic allies to just 12.