Axl Rose vs. The People's Republic

You really gotta wonder what all of these people were thinking.

The Chinese government made an official statement condemning Guns 'n' Roses' new album Chinese Democracy, especially its title track, for attacking the Chinese government and, just generally, promoting ... er ... democracy?

Did I just lose my mind?

First of all, apparently, the song is about the Falun Gong controversy, which is several years old. (I haven't heard the song.) This lack of topicality has to do with the fact that this album has been 17 years in the works ... that's right, they started recording in 1994 and were writing material even earlier than that.

Secondly, what the hell do Axl Rose and company know about China and politics and why are they attacking China? You get the feeling that this song was written in 1999, when the controversy blew up, and they got all excited about the cool title, and it just stuck. (Of course, I don't know that this is what happened, but it's all just so peculiar.)

Third, what the hell is China doing objecting to a rock album? Way to sound incredibly dense and stuffy, People's Repub! Seriously, does anyone in China think that publicly repudiating this album will do anything but let people know about it and get them curious?

And fourthly, since when did Chinese socialism not call itself "democratic"? Marxist movements around the world have, for a long time, used the words "democracy" and "republic," both of which mean--essentially--"of the people", because, well, they DO tend to start out as collectives, using collective decisionmaking processes. And the fact that they quickly become authoritarian dictatorships ... well, we're just coming out of eight years of W. Bush's kidnap-people-in-the-night-and-torture-them, "I'm the Decider" rule; we don't get to call the kettle black. Just because Western capitalist democracies have tried to corner the market on the word "democracy" doesn't mean that nobody else gets to use it.

So that's why it's so peculiar that an increasingly capitalist China is so allergic to the word "democracy." What gives?

And why are we letting all this make Axl Rose relevant again?