China's flagging economy — and Kanye West — give each other a helping hand

China’s flagging economy — and Kanye West — give each other a helping hand

Rapper Kanye West performs at Hollywood Park Grounds in Inglewood.

Sept. 19, 2024 Updated 5:48 PM PT

TAIPEI, Taiwan — A whirlwind China tour by Ye — formerly known as Kanye West — has brought a much-needed economic boost, both to a country struggling to lift consumer spending and to a musician whose controversies have hurt his business at home.

The Grammy Award-winning musician’s Sunday show in Haikou, the capital of China’s southern Hainan island province, was initially met with surprise, given China’s record of stringent controls on foreign artists.

But the 42,000 tickets available sold out in minutes. Days after, the local tourism bureau announced a second performance. Ye posted about the next “listening party” on Instagram, scheduled for Sept. 28.

“This is no ordinary additional show, but the blooming of music’s magic once more, and continuing revelry from fans,” the Haikou tourism bureau said in its release.

The fervor over the American rapper’s return to China after 16 years highlights the power of the “concert economy,” in which governments have courted superstar performances to attract fans and promote tourism. Earlier this year, Taylor Swift agreed to limit her Southeast Asia tour exclusively to Singapore, to the chagrin of its neighboring countries.

The Haikou government said Ye’s “Vultures Listening Experience” brought in a new high of $52.8 million in tourism revenue for the city, and that 96.5% of ticket sales were purchased by attendees from outside Hainan island. The event offered deals for visiting fans on food, accommodation and sightseeing, amplifying activity over China’s Mid-Autumn festival holiday.

China’s sluggish economy is in dire need of stimulus, particularly from consumers who have cut back steeply in the face of financial uncertainly. A real estate downturn has weighed on home prices while youth unemployment has climbed. According to the investment bank Nomura, consumer confidence is near an all-time low.

Cities around China have tried to encourage domestic tourism and local consumption. For many concertgoers, Ye’s arrival was incentive enough to splurge on a trip south.

According to Junjie Wang, a business reporter who writes a newsletter about China’s retail sector, users on China’s social media platform Xiaohongshu, which translates to Little Red Book, reported spending more than $1,400 on trips to see Ye. Hotel occupancy and sales at duty-free shops in Haikou also spiked during the holiday.

The warm reception in China also comes as a boon to Ye, who has seen ticket sales slow and brands cut ties following a string of racist and antisemitic statements over the past few years.

In China, such concerns over offensive comments have gone ignored. Instead, state media have touted Ye’s distant connection to China — the artist spent a year in China as a child, while his mother, an English professor, taught at Nanjing University.

The first Haikou concert brought in more than $7 million in ticket sales, compared to a five-show run in the U.S. in February that garnered more than $12 million, according to Billboard estimates. Additional “listening sessions” with Ye and rapper Ty Dolla Sign in the U.S. were canceled in April, though organizers did not give a reason.

“Kanye can help boost the economy in a difficult time and show that China is open to the world. His childhood ties with Nanjing serve the purposes of internal and external propaganda,” wrote Yaling Jiang in a newsletter about Chinese consumers called Following the Yuan. “State influence overrides all market factors, and Western values, even ‘universal’ values, aren’t all applied [in] China.”

Times special correspondent Xin-yun Wu in Taipei contributed to this report.