Chinese popular music

C-pop is an abbreviation for Chinese popular music (simplified Chinese: ; traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: zhōngwén liúxíng yīnyuè; Jyutping: zung1man4 lau4hang4 jam1ngok6), a loosely defined musical genre by artists originating from mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Others come from countries where the Chinese language is used by a large number of the population, such as Singapore and Malaysia. C-pop is sometimes used as an umbrella term covering not only Chinese pop but also R&B, ballads, Chinese rock, Chinese hip hop and Chinese ambient music, although Chinese rock branched off as a separate genre during the early 1990s.

There are currently three main subgenres within C-pop: Cantopop, Mandopop and Hokkien pop. The gap between cantopop and mandopop has been narrowing in the new millennium. Hokkien pop, initially strongly influenced by Japanese enka, has been re-integrating into C-pop and narrowing its trend of development towards Mandopop.

Chinese popular music has been recognized as a leading conveyor of changing perceptions and as shape of the consciousness of citizenry, serving to focus attention on issues of cultural, moral or even political significance. In China over the last few decades, popular music has become an important vehicle for expressing aspects of the dramatic social change that is recreating the cultural identity of this huge and important nation. However, the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1970 had significant impact on the country’s economy and culture. In the past 50 years, there have been intensive political and economic changes in China, and the adjustment from a planned economy to a socialist-market economy fostered the emergence of popular music in China under the communist ideology. Therefore, popular music in China is very different from that in western countries due to different political structures and cultural and social values.

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