The Musical Talmud: Chinese Democracy

[The “Musical Talmud” is our ongoing series that finds the true meaning behind pop music lyrics. See also Part 1, “Don’t Stop Believing,” Part 2, “The KKK Took My Baby Away,” and Part 3, “I Want It That Way.”]

It’s way over budget. It’s blown past multiple deadlines. I am, of course, referring to the long-awaited deconstruction of the lyrics to “Chinese Democracy,” the title track to the long-awaited Guns ‘n’ Roses Album Chinese Democracy.

On January 1, 2001, when Axl debuted the song at a live concert, he specifically cited Chinese political oppression as the inspiration for this song, so it’s a safe bet that Axl didn’t intend for “Chinese Democracy” to be a coded reference to something unrelated. With that in mind, let’s see what geopolitical insights Axl has to offer.

First, some historical context. Axl revealed the song “Chinese Democracy” in 2001, but the album title Chinese Democracy dates back to 1999. Going back even further, Axl began working on songs for the album as early as 1994, before the original GNR lineup disbanded. So it’s conceivable that Axl was working on the song “Chinese Democracy” anytime between 1994 and 2001. What happened during those years? Quite a lot, but a couple of highlights include the founding (and banning) of the China Democracy Party in 1998 and the crackdown on the Falun Gong religious movement in 1999. Meanwhile, in the mid-late 1990’s, Sino-American relations were on the mend after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, culminating with President Clinton’s visit to China in 1998. Trade between the countries was exploding during the period, and by 2000, the US government made permanent China’s Most Favored Nation status as a trading partner.

This tension between warming Sino-American relations and the continuing human rights abuses in China serves as the backdrop for “Chinese Democracy.” With that established, let’s get into the meat of the lyrics.

1.

It don’t really matter
You’re gonna find out for yourself
No it don’t really matter
You’re gonna leave this thing to somebody else

Pronouns are important–trust me on this–so let’s go ahead and extrapolate those undefined antecedents.  “You” refers to the US and other Western countries who are choosing to ignore or “leave to somebody else” China’s record of human rights abuses (the “it” and “this thing”). In other words, human rights abuses don’t matter. Only further trade and wealth creation does.

2.

If they were missionaries
Real time visionaries
Sitting in a Chinese stew
To view my dis-in-fat-u-ation

The history of Christianity in China is too much to get into here, but it’s well known that in the 19th and 20th centuries, missionaries played a powerful role in the Westernization of China. But Axl also paradoxically refers to them as “real-time visionaries.” If something is “real time,” then it’s in the moment in which something is occurring, but a “visionary” is someone with keen foresight into the future. Someone who unknowingly sees the future simply by witnessing the present? That would be our missionary friends, who oversaw a period of westernization of China that would return in a different form years later with Deng Xiaoping’s economic liberalization policies.

This first iteration of Westernization (imperialism and Christianity imposed from the outside) became the second wave (capitalism, mostly imposed from within, but inspired by the West) by sitting in a “Chinese stew.” This method, also called “red cooking,” involves stewing meat over a long period of time in a red liquid. In other words, the special sauce of Chinese communism.

That leaves Axl’s “disinfatuation” (assuming Axl is the “my”). Disinfatuation implies that previously, he was infatuated with China, but now feels differently. We’ll come back to this in a moment.

3.

I know that I’m a classic case
Watch my disenchanted face
Blame it on the Falun Gong
They’ve seen the end and it can’t hold on now

Axl continues in the first person, but now it appears that he’s singing from the point of view of a westerner who was a former “classic case” of infatuation or enchantment with communist China. Like the Westernization of China, this too came in two waves. The first was the spread of the Cult of Mao to the West, where radicals latched on to the idea of the revolutionary leader who was bringing social justice to his long-suffering people. The revelation of the horrors of the Cultural Revolution have pretty much put to rest this sort of admiration; now, the West admires China’s spectacular economic growth after the institution of Deng’s economic reforms.

“Blame it on the Falun Gong” may at first seem to be a straightforward reference to the CCP “blaming” the Falun Gong for anti-state activities. Instead, Axl is sarcastically “blaming” the Falun Gong for causing his disinfatuation/disenchantment with the myth of Chinese progress. The Falun Gong have seen the end–not of the CCP’s rule, but of their own movement–and they can’t hold on to escape further persecution. Things look pretty bleak.

Are you still with me? Yes? Congratulations. Let’s stop halfway for a brief recap. In the first three verses, Axl has lain out the evolution of modern China’s relationship with the US and the West. The initial seeds of Westernization were planted with Chinese missionaries, and after decades of stewing, has re-emerged in the form of Western-style market capitalization. Westerners, meanwhile, have become infatuated with this new China and are ignoring its human rights abuses to keep the wheels of commerce moving. Axl’s narrator, however, has seen past all of this and now sees the true nature of China; he cannot ignore the abuses going on in plain sight.

Now, we start to move closer to the possible end of Chinese authoritarianism:

4.

‘Cause it would take a lot more hate than you
To end the fascination
Even with an iron fist
All they got to rule the nation
When all I’ve got is precious time

“End the fascination” refers to Western infatuation/enchantment with China, which requires more hate than you (the West) apparently has for China right now. It seems strange that Axl is encouraging us to “hate” China more. Politically charged songs such as this typically refer to “hate” as something to be avoided (e.g. “hate crimes”), but if Axl is trying to shock the West out of its complacency, then one way to do it is by turning inflammatory language on its head.

The authoritarian rule of the CCP is clearly the “iron fist” that Axl refers to, but notice that the “iron fist” is “all they got,” as if it’s somehow insufficient. Axl, however, has “precious time,” meaning that the CCP can try to keep China down with its iron fist, but the forces pushing for freedom in China will eventually prevail. Time/history is on their side (as Axl surely felt was the case with the 14 year long production of the album).

5.

It don’t really matter
Guess I’ll keep it to myself
Said it don’t really matter
It’s time I look around for somebody else

Axl restates the first verse, but with a twist: he’s keeping “it”–presumably, his theories on the moral propriety of engaging China–to himself. He’s finished with trying to convince the Western establishment that its infatuation with China is morally wrong, so now he’s looking for “somebody else” to share it with (this comes back in verse 7, below).

6.

‘Cause it would take a lot more time than you
Have got for masturbation
Even with your iron fist
All they got to rule the nation
When all we got is precious time
All they got to fool the nation
When all I got is precious time

Remember, I said pronouns are important: the “you,” as we found out earlier, refers to the West. Here, Axl focuses his criticism on Western society and its need for instant gratification and self-pleasure. All they have time for is masturbation; it would take more time (and effort) to take the moral high ground (and actually get laid?). Axl goes even further and says that the West also employs “your iron fist”; it’s all “they”–both China AND Western nations–have to rule (and fool) their respective nations. On the other hand, “we” (people in western countries as well as the Chinese)  have “precious time,” but it’s “all we got.” Without other tools available to fight the twin iron fists of Western capitalism and Chinese authoritarianism, we’ll have to wait for true justice and democracy.

7.

It don’t really matter
I guess you’ll find out for yourself
No it don’t really matter
So you can hear it now from somebody else

Axl is again admonishing the West for its acceptance of China. They’ll find out the truth both for themselves, but also “from somebody else”–the same “somebody else” that Axl referred to in the fifth verse. Who is this unnamed “third party?” Let’s come back to this. We’re almost to the end of this song.

8.

You think you got it all locked up inside
And if you beat ’em enough they’ll die
It’s like a walk in the park from a cell
And now you’re keeping your own kind in hell
When your great wall rocks blame yourself
While their arms reach up for your help
And you’re out of time

Axl is now directly tying the West to Chinese human rights abuses, such as the imprisonment of political dissidents. As for the “Great Wall,” one might at first assume that this refers to the actual Great Wall of China, but as we’ve seen, Axl is trying to tie China’s power and its abuses to those of the West. With the pronoun “you,” Axl is actually referring to another “great wall,” in this case, the now-commonly accepted idea that the West should cooperate with China rather than confront it and its human rights abuses. When the “great wall rocks”–when this myth begins to crumble–the West will only have itself to blame. Coming to the finish line, Axl throws in for good measure the unmistakable imagery of political prisoners’ arms reaching up in vain for help from the free world.

Finally, Western nations and the CCP are “out of time”; their power has collapsed. Democracy and justice have arrived…but how? Remember that “somebody else” that Axl vaguely referred to in verses 5 and 7? This is clearly the agent that has finally brought about this revolution, but Axl provides scant evidence to its identity. Is it a worldwide grassroots movement of human rights advocates? A violent revolution of the proletariat? The Second Coming Of Christ? Your guess is as good as mine–show me in the comments if you’ve made it to the end!

Conclusion: Axl has taken us on a tour de force of international relations. “Chinese Democracy” is a powerful statement against a policy of engagement with China that doesn’t confront its human rights abuses. Axl, however, holds little faith in the resolve of Western powers; instead, he takes the long view on history and is counting on a new power base to rise to confront the establishment.