Sunday, May 18, 2025 

Culture Black Market China Deng Xiaoping Gorbachev Individualism Rock and Roll Taiwan

Tiananmen Square

The Inspiring Teresa Teng

Lawrence W. Reed

The pop star who stood for freedom.

After the Soviet Empire expired in the 1989–91 period, commentators worldwide revealed the autopsy results. The patient died of terminal socialism, a disease characterized by backward economies, massive shortages, and the absence of competition in both political and economic life. Powerful internal resistance movements (such as Solidarity in Poland), encouraged by the resolute leadership of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II, helped pull the plug. The state had indeed “withered away,” but not in the fashion the false prophet Karl Marx envisioned.

The role played by music in ending so many evil regimes, Rock & Roll in particular, is not so well understood. Historian Larry Schweikart convincingly maintains that among younger generations, Rock & Roll fostered a spirit fatal to the unquestioned loyalty demanded by those regimes. Schweikart says the poison wasn’t in the lyrics. It was in “the freedom of Rock & Roll as a musical structure.”

Though a tune involves an entire group performing collectively, what struck home to listeners was the distinctiveness of individuals within the group. Band members accompanied Bruce Springsteen, for example, but it was Springsteen who stood out and inspired the imagination of young fans. How refreshing in societies where propaganda had long taught that it was the collective that mattered, not the individual!

Individuality is the toxin that music injects into the totalitarian system. Try as it might, the system ultimately cannot resist it. Schweikart quotes the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev:

We could keep out books. We could keep out television. But we could not keep out rock ’n’ roll. Rock ’n’ roll was fundamental to bringing down communism.

A similar story played out in Communist China, though it helped produce regime change, not regime extinction (unfortunately). It involves a pop music icon from Taiwan, Teresa Teng 鄧麗君(1953–1995).

Teresa Teng established herself as Asia’s premier singer in a career that spanned nearly three decades. She mixed Eastern and Western genres into her own unique popular music. No Asian musician came close to her renown in the decades of the ’80s and ’90s. She was a superstar by any estimation, recording more than 1,700 songs and selling about 48 million albums. Her songs of love and relationships, combined with a new “breath singing” method, broke the collectivist mold ordained by authorities in communist countries like China. Young people turned to Teresa Teng to escape the boredom of official tunes meant to glorify state and country.

Teng’s music began to be pirated into mainland China in the mid-’70s, and would influence listeners in the Communist state just as Rock & Roll helped shred the Iron Curtain in Europe.

Check out the music video for “The Moon Represents My Heart,” released in 1977. She sang in Mandarin, so she had a natural audience on the mainland, and her legion of fans marked the beginning of Chinese pop music fandom.

The PRC hard-liners perceived the threat almost immediately. Not only was Teng from Taiwan, which Beijing considered a breakaway province, but her music also celebrated the individual instead of the state. Her lyrics were not explicitly political, but she occasionally sang of freedom in vague terms. People found the music liberating, so Beijing’s paranoids banned her work for years.

Meanwhile, Mao Zedong died in 1976, opening the door for a new generation of reformers led by Deng Xiaoping. He became the mainland’s leader in 1978, and, like Gorbachev in the Soviet Union, he recognized that sclerotic socialism needed some measure of freedom to reform. Under the slogan “It doesn’t matter what color the cat is as long as it catches mice,” Deng opened the country to limited free enterprise, foreign trade and investment, and a diversity of cultural influences (the “Open Door Policy”).

By the time of Deng’s reforms, Teresa Teng’s songs had already flooded China’s black markets. Deng’s government surrendered to the inevitable and lifted the ban on Teng’s music in the mid-’80s. Her notoriety then broke all records. It was widely said that while Chinese people listened to “old Deng” by day, they preferred to hear “little Teng” by night.

Then came the nightmare of the Tiananmen Square massacre in early June 1989. Student protesters by the thousands occupied Beijing’s main square for a month, demanding greater freedom and an end to the communist one-party monopoly. Teresa Teng supported the students from afar, even performing before 300,000 in Hong Kong in their defense. But as the world sadly knows, Deng Xiaoping ordered the Army to crush the uprising, killing at least a thousand and jailing many more.

She never performed on the mainland. After Tiananmen Square, she publicly declared she would not do so until the two Chinas were united under freedom, not communism.

Teng earned millions as Asia’s music superstar and became a pioneering philanthropist, raising huge sums for projects ranging from water systems in Thailand to disaster relief and other charitable endeavors in multiple countries. To the communists in Beijing, that was another mark against her because humanitarian assistance should come from the State, not private, “greedy” capitalists.

As the first Chinese-speaking vocalist to gain recognition and international influence, she opened doors for other artists throughout the region. Her notoriety ultimately reached every continent. Countries that issued postage stamps in her honor include: Russia; Sierra Leone, Mali, and Guinea-Bissau in Africa; Grenada in the Caribbean; as well as many in Asia. Her music still sells briskly the world over.

Teresa Teng died at the age of 42 from a severe asthma attack while in Thailand. Her premature demise sent shock waves throughout Asia, but the spirit of her unique music resonates to this day. When the captive peoples of Beijing’s tyranny are someday liberated, we will look back and likely credit Teng’s music for contributing to the revolutionary spirit that finally got the job done.

Additional Resources:

That Old Devil Music by Larry Schweikart

Schweikart Explains Rock’s Battle with Communism (video)

No Matter How Time Flies By, I Only Care About Teresa Teng by BBC News

The Melancholy Pop Idol Who Haunts China by Hua Hsu

Prodigy of Taiwan, Diva of Asia: Teresa Teng by David B. Gordon

Lawrence W. Reed

Lawrence W. (“Larry”) Reed is FEE’s President Emeritus, Humphreys Family Senior Fellow, and Ron Manners Global Ambassador for Liberty. He previously served as president of FEE from 2008-2019. He chaired FEE’s board of trustees in the 1990s and has been both writing and speaking for FEE since the late 1970s.

FEE(Foundation for Economic Education)：The Inspiring Teresa Teng