The Decline of Traditional Chinese Opera

With the flourishing of Chinese pop culture, the music market of traditional Chinese opera has suffered audience loss and is gradually fading out of the public eye under the effect of pop music. This paper uses literature and China Central Television rating surveys to compare Chinese opera and pop music, in terms of the difficulty of interpretation, music market, and performance content. The results show that Chinese opera is more difficult to interpret and has more rigid requirements for the performers compared with pop music. Regarding the music market, due to the commercialization of music, pop music has replaced Chinese opera as mainstream music. Moreover, Chinese opera is increasingly related to political propaganda while pop music aims to entertain people.