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Jay Chou or in Chinese Zhou Jielun, is undeniably the most popular Chinese singer in a number of Chinese communities. His glittering career is reflected by his record sales and by the popularity of his concerts. In 2004, his album Qilixiang, or Jasmine, released by Sony Music, excelled in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the People's Republic of China (PRC). Despite overwhelming piracy in Taiwan-which has reduced the recording industry to 5 to 10 percent from its heyday-as a Taiwan singer, Jay produced an album that sold a record 300,000 copies. In Hong Kong, his album surpassed local albums with sales of 50,000 units. In China the official figure reached 2.6 mdlion units, a stunning figure that no other Chinese artist has attained. In 2005, his album Chopin of November continued this record of success with sales of 2.5 million units in Asia. His charismatic vigor, avant-garde image, and mercantile potential are not only recognized in Chinese societies; the World Music Awards in September 2004 held in Las Vegas acknowledged him, based on his high record sales, as the most popular Chinese singer.
The significance of the Jay Chou story lies in its implications as a successful marketing model for China and beyond to the larger Asia market. Why would a Taiwan-born 25-year-old singer-without flaunting a connection to China or the West-culturally and commercially sweep China with his style, persona, and image and do so while China is actively agonizing over the Taiwanese independence issue? What kind of cultural strategies did Jay Chou embrace to surmount the various political, economic, and cultural constraints involved in the Chinese market? Illustrating how Jay Chou navigates these structural limits and the political agenda of popular culture is valuable. Theorizing a framework for how popular culture cuts across geopolitical spaces and surmounts cultural barriers is not only beneficial for marketing of other culture products, but also sheds light on the ideologies of evolving Chinese popular culture.
This paper THus illustrates how Jay Chou's music production has wittingly strategized to construct images and products that can be both locally and nationally assimilated into Chinese culture and nationally accepted as a "prototype" product-a product whose political standard has been authoritatively acknowledged by the state. The study is based on three years...