Burger King has the £85 Kobe beef burger, we have the RMB 100,000 (£7,350) entry visa. That’s not a typo. Sources tell CMR that this is the new cost of a visa for a foreign musician who wishes to perform in China. A club owner in Beijing notes that, from a government perspective, the astronomical fee is “a much more politically acceptable way to restrict foreign performances than simply to turn them down, because except for the biggest acts, this all but assures that organizers will take losses on any shows they organize, especially for bands that involve several people.” Let’s say for example that Tokyo Police Club wanted to come over and do a China tour: It would take a whopping RMB 400,000 just to get the four band members through immigration. That’s roughly the same price as 40 round-trip airfares from New York to Shanghai. For anything other than the most mainstream acts, this visa fee ensures a net loss on touring that will be too much to bear.
The irony, as the Beijing club owner mentions, is that this exorbitant new fee (which will hopefully deflate after the Olympics) won’t affect the Maroon 5s, Celine Dions and, ahem, Bjorks of the music world, “since a few hundred thousand additional RMB are probably well within the normal budget” for these international idols. Meanwhile, Chinese fans of more independent, under-the-radar music should gear up for a moratorium on international artists for the time being.
On a similarly foreboding note, we hear that last Friday a popular Beijing eatery “that had recently started a summer outdoor music series, had its show halted….According to one of the managers, a police officer simply walked up to [the] stage without saying a word to anyone in the restaurant and pulled the microphone out of the hand of the singer and said the show was over. He gave no explanation…” The silenced band, a folksy garage trio, are by all accounts apolitical. Still, authorities are keeping a close eye and a tight grip on any public setting that draws a crowd, no matter how innocuous their reasons for assembly.