China's Soft Power Rap "This is China" Blasted for Plagiarizing Korean Rapper

In June of this year, China's soft power machine took to a new medium to dispel any misunderstandings that the world may have about the nation: a rap song titled "This is China," with lyrics squarely aimed at overseas listeners with the message: China's great, but give us a break because it's incredibly hard to govern such a vast country.

Now, in both equal parts embarrassing and ironic – highlighting some of China's ongoing issues with governance of intellectual property rights – the track's video has been caught red-handed lifting some of its central imagery directly from a well-known South Korean rapper.

The exact incidence of theft in question, reported by Sixth Tone, regards one the more memorable clips from the video by Sichuan-based rap outfit CD Rev. In it, two rappers perform wearing traditional Sichuanese theatrical makeup, and while not clearly identified as CD Rev, viewers could not be blamed for reaching the conclusion that it is in fact the duo.

It now turns out that the figure is in fact Korean rapper Jung San, who goes by the stage name San E, and is a snippet taken from his song 2013 track "Rap Circus."

Following an infringement claim by South Korean hip-hop record label Brand New Music, CD Rev's video was removed from Youtube, though it remains online on Youku in China.

It appears that the makers of the video aren't doing themselves any favors with regards to admitting their mistake, but instead reveal a few traits that get to the heart of what many perceive about China's casual attitude towards intellectual property.

When approached by Sixth Tone, Wu Dezu, who produced of the music video for the China Communist Youth League, said that the question of copyright infringement was irrelevant because the video is non-commercial product (as conveniently stated in a caveat end of the video in Chinese, translated to: "The content of this video comes from the Internet – the rights to all the scenes within it belong to the original creators.")

When prodded further as whether usage of the clip was appropriate, Wu seemed to rationalize the usage of the clip by blaming the Korean artist for stealing the imagery from traditional Chinese culture in the first place. “Is it appropriate that a South Korean made a video of China’s Sichuanese face-changing?” he told Sixth Tone. Which sounds a lot to us like, "little Jimmy cheated on the test, so why shouldn't I?"

CD Rev simultaneously washed their hands of the video and added that stealing doesn't count if no one saw the original. “We didn’t make the video – it has nothing to do with us,” CD Rev's Wang Zixin told Sixth Tone, following that up with the rationalization: “most people don’t follow South Korean celebrities and wouldn’t know that he was Korean.”

The quote sounds particularly tone deaf coming from a rapper and a devotee to a genre that has been sampling others since its origins in the 1970s. A long history of copyright litigation means almost every performer knows to give credit where credit is due.

How much of the rest of the video was "borrowed" is unclear. Next time we suggest that the makers want to prop up China with popular culture, we suggest they only steal locally-produced imagery.

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Email: tomarnstein@thebeijinger.com
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Images: Jung San (via Sixth Tone), Showasia, The Guardian