China to battle counterfeits (Singers, that is)

As anybody whom knows anything about Chinese culture will tell you, China and counterfeits have a strange relationship. Not any counterfeits, just counterfeits in particular just counterfeits in general.

A culture of Innocence

When out shopping in the West consumers unthinkingly regard pretty much everything that they see on sale as being the real deal. Whether they are shopping in a super store or a local convenience store, the idea that they might be walking away with a counterfeit product rarely enters the head of the average Western consumer. Largely this is because counterfeit goods don't get sold in stores, only in back allies and market stalls, or across the tables in bars. With both the buyer and the seller knowing what the deal is.

A culture of Acceptance

In China, however, things are quite different. They are so different that the idea that a product might be genuine is often not one that is entertained by consumers, people accept that a lot of what they see which isn't a local or regional brand will be fake, and that just about everything claiming to be a foreign brand will be fake, too. In fact not only are products often fake but the stores themselves may be fake, too. Strange but true. There are Nike branded stores in China that Nike doesn't know about selling Nike branded products that didn't come from Nike's factories, and who can forget about Xingbake, and their fake Starbuck franchise.

People just accept that things are fake and get on with their lives, happy in the cultural belief that buying a product based on stolen IPR is in now way comparable to buying a product that was itself stolen in the physical sense.

Not so Accepting

With such an ingrained culture of accepting counterfeits as being a part of life you might think that China would be much more relaxed about all aspects for fakery than the West. However, as many China watchers will tell you, this couldn't be further from the truth. In fact there are some things that Westerners intrinsically expect to contain elements of fakery, but where Chinese expect nothing but honesty, and become quite upset when they find out that things are not as they seem.

After all who can forget the ruckus created in June 2005 when Beijing revealed that many celebrities endorsed products that they did not use. Or the outrage that same year when it was revealed that  the spokesperson for a well known children's dietary supplement was in fact a childless actress playing the part of a proud mother.  http://angrychineseblogger.blog-city.com/whose_fault_is_it_anyway_the_blame_game_and_state_censorship.htm

New Regulations?

Thusly, and in relation to that above, Beijing has recently announced a new raft of regulations to prohibit fakery in one area that the West have become so used to that it's often not even considered to be fakery any more: Miming.

In Mid-November China's Ministry of Culture published early drafts for new legislation which would effectively ban stage performers from miming to pre-recorded songs, known in the West as lip-syncing, or from passing off pre-recorded music as live music.

According to the Ministry of Information, both infractions would be treated as "cheating the public", and would be punishable by strict measures. Though the neither the Ministry of Culture or Information would be drawn on the nature of any punishment 中国新闻社 (China News Service), Mainland China's second largest news agency, was quoted as saying punishments may include "naming and shaming" for each offense committed, and public performance bans being placed on those who offended a second time within two years.

It is not yet clear what impact this will have, or how far the regulations will go. It is also not clear whether they will apply to bands whom supplement their own vocals/instruments with pre recorded tracks. Though some China watchers have voiced suspicion that the measure may well be open to abuse by officials, particularly in light of the fact that the practice of lip-syncing and using pre-recorded sample during live performances is "not unknown" amongst bands of the type that have been criticized by Chinese authorities for mixing English language and dialect words into their songs, and for imitating the dress style of Western and Japanese singers.

Lip-syncing?

Lip-syncing, short for Lip Synchronization, is a well known practice within the entertainment industry in which a performer will mime to a pre-recorded track in order to give the impression that they are singing live. This many be done for a variety of reasons including to ensure that concerts can continue even though the artist has suffered from vocal strain that would otherwise have resulted in the concert being stopped, or to allow a performer to perform energetic dance routines during a song that would otherwise leave them out of breath if they were to attempt to sing at the same time.

However, lip-syncing is also used to allow singers to perform songs that have been studio edited in order to make up for an artists lack of vocal range or to allow the for the inclusion of effects that cannot be achieved by the unaided human voice. In some instances lip-syncing has even been used by record companies to combine the looks of one performer with the vocal talents of another. With the disgraced Western band Milli Vanilli being amongst the best examples of the latter.

Similarly, pre-recorded music tracks are often used to allow artists to perform (or rather appear to perform) complex musical arrangements while also performing energetic movements on stage, or which are too complex for any real musician to perform without assistance, but also sometimes to conceal the fact that band members may not be able to play their own instruments.

links: digg this    del.icio.us    technorati    reddit