Axl Rose and the Pawns of the World: The Full Translation

The world’s biggest rocktease, Axl Rose, finally released “Chinese Democracy” two days ago. A rumor that the album contained backwards verses from Mao’s “Little Red Book” was repeated on ABC’s World News Now on Monday morning by anchor Jeremy Hubbard. But the actual title and lyrics on the album were enough to spark an intense reaction from a writer at China’s Global Times, which was reported throughout Western media. TIME’s China Blog has reprinted the title song’s controversial lyrics.

The song “Chinese Democracy” begins with an echo chamber of Chinese voices, most of them repeating the phrases 说话人。 说得对不对？ 说得不对, or “shuōhuàrén. shuōde duìbùduì? shuōde bùduì.” Loose translation: “Speaker. Did he put it right? He put it wrong.”

Here, for the first time anywhere, we have the full translation of the Global Times article, plus 20 reader comments. Thanks to contributor Jason Weinberg for the excellent translation.

美乐队发专辑恶毒攻击中国
American Rock Band Releases an Album Visciously Attacking China

On the 23rd, American rock band “Guns and Roses” plans to release what should be the band’s first new album in 17 years; this album, called “Chinese Style Democracy,” turns its spear point at China, immediately becoming the object of much Western media publicity. This also aroused much of the Chinese population’s and fan’s indignation. Some Internet users say that those Western stars who are entwined in scandals involving violence, sex, and drugs rarely come to China; moreover they are unable to talk about how to understand Chinese democracy, so their shows like this can only demonstrate that some Westerners say “democracy” but it is only their attempt to control and impress upon the pawns of the world.

An article from “The Wall Street Journal” online edition on November 22 said, this new “Guns N’ Roses” album has run into China’s wall, its title greatly offended the Chinese government, and also made many Chinese music fans angry. Reportedly, many Chinese people hope to have a larger voice, but many people think too much democracy, too quickly, will create chaos, and are unhappy about foreign influences coming in and getting mixed up. A Chinese singer said, from the album’s title it can be seen that “they do not understand China,” it’s nothing more than for the sake of stirring up a large group of people’s excitement.

Reuters reported in a caption that, “Guns and Roses will not bring democracy to China.” According to the report, it is impossible for the new album to launch in China because this new album’s title song’s lyrics say, illegal “Fa Lun Gong” “already saw the end, now you cannot hold on.” The album also described “Chinese people’s helplessness is governed under an iron fist.”

This album immediately arouses Chinese netizens’ indignation.  According to Chinese Internet users, there are some Western rock bands who will always look for some “hot topics” to show their own “alternativeness,” indeed, anti-Christian, Satan worship, death and violence-type bands are many. In a word, a large forest will have every type of bird. Now, this is the same thing as marketing! Also, some Internet users say, even these kinds of people have started judging China; in the West, all that must be done to become popular is criticize China, some people carry a “Tibet independence” flag, coming to China to “demonstrate” for a while, and after returning all became “heroes.” These anti-Chinese clowns’ pockets are bulging with money. Western countries’ “democracy” is essentially just this century’s Western countries’ method of control and impressing upon the pawns of the world.

This year, some foreign stars have already expressed some criticisms attacking China, for example Sharon Stone saying “the earthquake is China’s retribution,” along with with Mia Farrow’s attacking China with the Darfur problem. These people sometimes speak with Western politicians and media, with one voice criticizing and attacking China.

Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Institute of American Studies researcher Tao Wenzhao reported in “Global Times” that, in Western performance circles, some foreign stars actually don’t understand China, indeed they have not come to China, they depend on implicit bias or fall under some fraudulent propaganda, in reference to China, they just say three is four. Although China has changed a lot, many Westerners who have come to China have a deep impression of China’s change, but politicians’ propaganda and media’s reports still are biasing many people’s deep opinion of China. Concerning these people, on the one hand we hope they don’t want to be biased, on the other hand we want to become stronger and improve foreign propaganda, which involves shaping up our international image and is a very important matter. ▲●Washington special correspondant Su Li● Reported by our special correspondant Lu Qi

At the time this was compiled, there were 649 reader comments on the original article. Here we’ve translated 20 of the most recent:

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美乐队发专辑恶毒攻击中国