![]() ![]() Zhang Gong, who once had a music school in Shandong, says he will keep publishing his music on social media despite the threats from officials in China. "I see children, bodies wrapped in foam and ice," Zhang sings. "In a city of 1.4 billion people, the voices of despair rise and fall," the song, titled "Seven Storey Pagoda" in a reference to the preciousness of human life, goes. The calls started after Zhang posted a video of himself performing a song he wrote during the 2022 Shanghai lockdown, when millions of people were barricaded into their homes and neighborhoods as part of Xi Jinping's zero-COVID policy, subjected to daily compulsory testing, and hauled off en masse to out-of-town quarantine camps in the middle of the night. "She doesn't even have a phone number any more." "My wife called me last night and said that all of her social media accounts were shut down within a second of each other – WeChat, Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, everything," Zhang said. Meanwhile, Zhang's wife – who is still in China – has had all of her social media accounts shut down. Police warned him that they would begin criminal proceedings if he failed to comply.īut Zhang told Radio Free Asia that he will continue to publish his music on social media despite the threats from officials back home. "When I asked them on whom, they said they didn't know, but that there was a directive that came down from the central government calling on them to contact me immediately and to demand that I delete everything." ![]() "When I asked them why, they said my music is having a negative impact." "They have been demanding that I delete all of my music from Twitter, and to delete my Twitter account," Zhang said. ![]() "Hey everyone, it's Crazy Zhang here – it's been mad the amount of people who have been calling me on the phone in the past few days," Zhang Gong said in a video statement via his Twitter account. In another example of China’s attempts at “ long-arm ” law enforcement beyond its borders, officials have been calling him from the Cyberspace Administration, the regular police and the state security police. Chinese police have been calling a U.S.-based singer-songwriter known as "Crazy Zhang" and demanding that he delete his music from Twitter, saying his satirical lyrics taking aim at ruling Communist Party leader Xi Jinping are "having a negative impact." ![]()
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