Beijing Changes Tune, Signs Rock Idol to Rescue Asian Games

Chinese authorities have turned to a previously banned Chinese rock idol to help rescue the Asian Games of 1990, which China once hoped would be its springboard to the Olympic Games of 2000.

Songwriter and guitarist Cui Jian confirmed at a news conference Wednesday that he will begin a nationwide concert tour Sunday to raise funds for the Asian Games, which diplomats say have lost many potential international sponsors as a result of last June’s crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.

Cui, who drew hundreds of thousands of screaming fans to his concerts before last June, has not been allowed to perform in public since the crackdown. A popular music video he made, which includes scenes of the pro-democracy demonstrations last spring in Tian An Men Square, is still banned by authorities.

Now Cui has been rehabilitated, at least for the time being. Organizers of Wednesday’s news conference distributed dozens of posters promoting his forthcoming concert tour, and Cui sidestepped all politically sensitive questions.

“The most important thing to me is culture,” he said.

When he was asked whether it bothers him that the tour’s sponsors are the same leaders who were responsible for the June crackdown, he replied: “Culture includes politics, but that does not mean we are doing this for politics. I think culture is like a body of water, and politics is like a boat. If the water is stagnant . . . it is our responsibility to make it circulate. Since I am involved in culture, that is my job.”

Responding to questions about earlier charges that his music represents “bourgeois liberalization,” a Communist Party term for unwelcome foreign influences, Cui said the charges are unjust.

“My father is a party member, and my mother was a member of the Youth League,” he said, “so it is impossible for me to be a bourgeois liberal. I am Beijing-born and Beijing-bred.”

Friends and associates of Cui said his true motives for taking part in the government’s effort to promote the Asian Games are personal. He simply missed performing, they said, and when he was approached with the idea of a concert tour, he saw it as an opportunity to use the system to his advantage.

“The Asian Games Committee is in big trouble,” one said. “The Chinese people are not interested in the games at all. In fact, they’re hostile toward them. They recognize them as a propaganda tool.”

According to diplomatic sources, many multinational corporations still active in China have withdrawn their support for the games since last year’s crackdown, which left several hundred people dead.

These sources said that international outrage over the crackdown has all but eliminated China’s hopes of persuading the International Olympic Committee to hold the Summer Olympics of 2000 in Beijing.

One diplomat praised the government’s decision to enlist Cui’s support to save the Asian Games, which are scheduled to take place here in September. The move will bring renewed respectability to rock ‘n’ roll in China, he said.

Although the music flourished in the years of social, economic and political reform under former party Chairman Zhao Ziyang, it was high on the list of so-called Western decadence targeted after last year’s crackdown.