De-Westernizing Punk: Chinese Punk Lyrics and the Translocal Politics of Resistance

Abstract

Punk in China suffers from the stigma of inauthenticity and the dilemma of belatedness. That is, it comes ‘after’ the original punk moment in the West and is understood as derivative and therefore inauthentic. It does not follow, however, that in places that came ‘late’ to punk, such as China, punk is merely an echo of Western practice. Recent scholarship has embraced the concept of ‘global punk’, alongside projects to decolonize punk studies, to destabilize Western-centric understandings of punk authenticity. Consistent with this agenda, we undertake a comparative analysis of 60 seminal 1970s UK and US punk songs and 60 Chinese punk songs released since the founding of Chinese punk in the 1990s, to analyse the translocal durability of punk. Punk in China, we argue, mobilizes a durable ethic of do-it-yourself resistance to interrogate local political conditions and adds weight to the catch-cry that ‘punk is not dead’.