China cracks down on pop culture to “control” youth

As Beijing encourages more births in response to the imminent population crisis, Peng told AFP that these measures are also meant to show prospective parents that it is “safe to raise children” in China.

The party has determined that the quality of youth is being threatened by the entertainment and culture consumed by Chinese youth.

It has long been a policy to control the viewing, listening, and reading content of Chinese young people. In recent years, men with earrings, tattoos, or “vulgar” hip-hop lyrics have been subjected to strict Internet censorship and suppression.

Now, this kind of control has also been extended to the games of young Chinese.

Regulators have ordered China’s top game companies to control “bad tendencies,” and hundreds of companies have vowed not to publish content that promotes “money worship” or “politically harmful”.

The party is pursuing a very different example for children-President Xi himself, whose political ideas are introduced to elementary school students this semester.