Ad-libbing during a routine is standard for many comedians. But in China, it can land performers in hot water. That was the case for one of the country’s most famous comics, Guo Degang, who is under official investigation for riffing on the lyrics of a famous patriotic song during a show.
Mr. Guo has drawn comparisons to the likes of Ricky Gervais, and has starred in movies and hosted TV shows in China. After a show in Wuhan in July, he was reported to city’s culture and tourism bureau for singing a modified version of the song, which hails the bravery of Chinese soldiers during a historic battle against Japan.
His case highlights the delicate line comedians must tread in a heavily censored creative landscape. The comedy scene provides a rare venue for indirect criticisms about contemporary life in China; but the space for self-expression is becoming increasingly narrow as China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, has made arts and culture a focus for ideological crackdowns.
The bureau launched an investigation into Mr. Guo last week after receiving a complaint, according to The Paper, a popular Shanghai-based state-backed newspaper. The bureau said it was looking into whether he had violated a regulation under which performers must have their sets vetted by officials in advance, the outlet reported.
An official who answered the phone at the Hubei Culture and Tourism Bureau, in the province encompassing Wuhan, confirmed the investigation against Mr. Guo on Tuesday. He described the matter as sensitive, but did not provide more details. A show Mr. Guo was scheduled to perform in the city of Xi’an was postponed, according to a social media post by the theater that was going to host it. Organizers have not announced if it will be rescheduled.
Mr. Guo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Guo, 53, is credited with reviving cross talk, or xiangsheng, a comedy genre that mixes scripted and improvised sketches that originated in the Qing dynasty. In the 2010s, Chinese media lauded him for attracting younger audiences to a genre with an aging fan base.
But improvisation can be at odds with official policy, which requires comics to submit scripts and set lists of their performances for official approval in advance. In recent years, Mr. Xi has stepped up controls on speech that challenges the Communist Party’s narratives around politics and history. The government has also demanded that artists align their creative visions with the Party’s goals and has encouraged comics to promote a nationalist vision.
The song Mr. Guo performed in July was “Playing My Beloved Pipa,” which refers to a traditional musical instrument and describes the heroics of Chinese guerrilla fighters against Japanese forces during the second Sino-Japanese war of 1937 to 1945. It was written for a well-known 1950s movie, “Railway Guerrilla,” which shared a name with the Chinese armed forces. In 2019, it was included in a list of 100 songs the Communist Party’s Central Committee named to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
According to media reports and videos of the performance posted online, Mr. Guo changed a line of lyrics: “The sun is about to set in the west; all is quiet on Weishan Lake.” He replaced the lake with “the Forbidden City,” a Beijing palace that was once the country’s political center. He also added other humorous lines, in which he pretended to pray to Buddha.
Mr. Guo had received the necessary approvals for his performance, but had not indicated that he would be changing the lyrics, The Paper reported, citing Wuhan officials.
Mr. Guo’s case highlighted how the Communist Party is increasingly sensitive to depictions of history that stray from officially sanctioned narratives, said Jian Xu, an associate professor at Deakin University in Melbourne who studies China’s digital culture and celebrity politics. The slander of China’s martyrs and heroes was made a crime in 2021 under an amended criminal code, and has been enforced zealously since. Anything that could be seen as a slight against revolutionary heroes, or classic art and literature that celebrated Communist history, was likely to receive strong public and government condemnation, Mr. Xu said.
In addition, it reflected how “celebrities are increasingly subject to moral governance by both the public and the state and are expected to promote ‘positive energy’ and socially approved values,” Mr. Xu said.
Chinese comedians have come under increasing scrutiny from the government and audiences in recent years. In 2023, a Chinese comedy studio was fined $2 million because Li Haoshi, a popular comedian, compared two stray dogs chasing a squirrel to the military. Announcing that penalty, officials urged artists and writers to have “correct creative thinking” and “provide healthy spiritual nourishment for the people.” Following that episode, comedy clubs around China canceled shows.
Online, some argued that Mr. Guo should be punished because appropriating and satirizing a revolutionary song was a severe matter. But others wondered if the outrage was disproportionate to the scale of his transgression.
Hu Xijin, the former editor of the Communist Party-run Global Times newspaper, said in a social media post that, although he found Mr. Guo’s version of the song “uncomfortable and inappropriate,” he was unsure how severe the matter was. “Those in our arts and literature scene who dare to maliciously cross the line are few and far in between,” he wrote in a post on Weibo, where he has nearly 25 million followers.
“To assume that such people are everywhere, and to give the harshest punishment to anyone who steps out of line to make an example out of them, is an error of judgment,” he added.
Siyi Zhao contributed research.
