Outside Taichung station, I’m ushered into a huge black Toyota and whisked to Houli District on the outskirts of the city to meet local rapper and influencer Chen Baiyuan (aka Mannam PYC) at his local temple. He’s turned the space into a community hub that hosts rap battles, community meals and charity events, and within seconds of arriving, we’re lighting incense sticks as part of a Taoist prayer. It’s not the welcome I expected from a man who is currently wanted by the Chinese Communist Party for promoting “anti-China” messages (with a potential £25,000 reward around his neck). But it soon becomes clear that every part of Baiyuan’s artistic vision, from recording to performing and community work, hinges around a controversial political goal.

“Some people in Taiwan think I’m crazy, but my life target is to counter-attack our mainland and take back our land,” he says. “I’m Taiwanese, but when I was younger I went to China to study. I lived there for eight years, and their culture and education was all about teaching me how to be ‘a real Chinese person’. I was trained to be a spy back in Taiwan. They will give you good money do this. Now, I am ready to create a system to fight back.”

Baiyuan’s hardline stance can be traced back to the outcome of the Chinese Civil War, which ended in 1949 with the People’s Republic of China fleeing to Taiwan and establishing a government led by the Kuomintang party. Since then, the CCP has imposed authoritarian rule on China; meanwhile, after decades of Kuomintang-enforced martial law, Taiwan became a democracy in 1987. Most Taiwanese people favour this de facto independence, but its dominant neighbour refuses to recognise its legitimacy or rule out a potential invasion. In hard-hitting tracks like “Retake The Mainland” (a bolshy single built around cut-throat strings and choral melodies, currently on 1.5m YouTube views) Mannam PYC offers a bold response to this precarious geopolitical situation, arguing that the Chinese people must overthrow their own government in order to unify the two nations. 

It’s no surprise that this position has landed him in trouble with China; for many years, the CCP have been blacklisting Taiwanese cultural figures who speak out in support of their island. One artist who knows this only too well is Dwagie, one of the two founding fathers of the Taiwanese hip-hop scene. Coming up in the 2000s alongside MC HotDog, he laid the foundations for a style of Mandarin hip-hop that embraced distinct parts of Taiwanese culture and identity, from smatterings of aboriginal language to “pop culture samples” and elements of old folk music that helped make him “a bridge between two generations”. 

As his career progressed, Dwagie started to become known for using his music to make strong political statements, from rallying the youth vote ahead of local elections in 2010 via the track ‘Change Taiwan’ (not dissimilar from the Grime 4 Corbyn campaign in the UK) to showing support for the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong in 2019 single “Raise My Fist”. He’s upheld that reputation for bold political music to this day, and it hasn’t always made his life easy.

“I’m on the blacklist, I’ve been forbidden from entering China for 23 or 24 years,” Dwagie laughs, leaning back into a swivel chair in his recording studio (based in the southern city of Tainan). “I’ve never been informed [of] this information, but I would see on the news that the Ministry of Culture has added some names to the list: musicians, actors and actresses and directors in Taiwan.”

Given how it can get you in trouble with China, promoting Taiwanese national pride is not something everyone feels comfortable doing. “Lots of artists have big China dreams,” Dwagie explains, referring to how the world’s second-largest economy offers a hugely appealing commercial market to local musicians. “So a lot of rappers don’t speak up for Taiwan because they dream of going to China in the future. I won’t say that’s wrong – if you want to tour there and make money, I’m happy for you – what I hate is some people try to extend their market there by talking shit about Taiwan.” 

Tracks like “Spicy” – a recent collaboration between Dwagie, Mannam PYC and Yang Shuya, an up-and-coming female MC who has spoken out powerfully about the historic misogyny of the Taiwanese rap scene – set out a firm pro-Taiwan stance. Meanwhile, younger rappers like Green Father, TroutFresh and Mad Neuron, who Dwagie praises for “speaking up for Taiwan” are also contributing to an ever-growing national scene, while pursuing their own individual paths.

“Politics is something that people usually want to focus on, but not all rappers in Taiwan are political,” Taipei-based journalist Brien John tells me. “There are people doing so many different things; one important element is the academic rap pioneered by Tripoets, they’re very educated (some are college professors) and they used more complicated internal rhymes and poetic lyrics.”

This is a key contextual point; according to writer Erya Hsue, in Taiwan “many prominent hip-hop artists are students from elite universities,” with Taiwanese music critic Claire Lee arguing that university identity serves as an “imagined street” for rappers who, in a sparse and decentralised hip-hop landscape, grew up in completely different places and often only coalesced around music in these academic spaces.  

There are also many rappers who rap in their own languages,” John adds. “People used to think that Mandarin is a hard language to rap in because it doesn’t have the same flow and intonation as English. That’s why indigenous languages are sometimes used, because the rhythm and intonation is more musical.”

While many of Taiwan’s more political artists favour a heavier sound that borrows sharp, upbeat rhythmic elements from trap and grime, within the broader scene there’s a strong contingent that prefers a more lo-fi, mellow hip-hop sound. At Hip Park, a large courtyard cultural space in northern Tainan, I visit a free party put on by The Source, where Dwagie’s higher intensity act is contrasted by laid-back, jazz-flecked hip-hop performances from Soft Lipa and GDNY. It’s a youthful crowd, thanks partly to the skateboarding competition that takes place in the same creative park that afternoon. Speaking to Dwagie about the evolution of the hip-hop scene he helped create – he calls Tainan “the hip-hop epicentre of Taiwan,” noting how “lots of street cultures started here” – it’s clear how important these events are for him and his label, Kung Fu Entertainment. 

“We don’t sign new artists anymore, [instead] we offer shows to those young artists so they can make money. I think that’s the most efficient way and that’s what they really need,” he explains. “What they really need is performances, they don’t really need companies to sign them because nowadays you can record with a laptop and the quality is already good enough. ”

Mannam PYC’s success so far backs up this vision. Like most young Taiwanese rappers, Baiyuan was influenced by Dwagie, but he’s undeniably charting his own unique course, which not only involves pissing off the Chinese authorities at every turn, but also using his sizeable social media platform to highlight disinformation and try to push back against his political opponents. Whether or not you agree with his particular political messages, it’s a testament to how social media and rap music can combine to critique power and question dominant narratives. 

“The Chinese government is ready to arrest me,” Baiyuan says. “They can’t arrest me in Taiwan, but China are capable, they’re strong, it is a really big system and we are only small. Also, a lot of people in Taiwan have been bought by the Chinese government and TikTok gives young people in Taiwan false information.”

“If they really want me to disappear, maybe one day I will,” he continues. But all I can do is keep going and keep speaking my mind. Our democracy, our free speech, is one of our weapons. We can use our values as weapons to fight back.”