China Scientific and Cultural Audio-Video Publishing Company

China Scientific and Cultural Audio-Video Publishing Company (China Scientific and Cultural Audio-Video Publishing Company), established in mainland China, is a national-level comprehensive audio-visual publishing institution approved by the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television. Beyond its traditional publishing functions in science and education, culture, academia, and mainstream documentary audio-visual products, the company played an exceptionally unique and pivotal role as a “publisher of license numbers and co-distributor” in the history of China’s physical pop music record industry.

From the 1990s through the 2000s, audio-visual publishing in mainland China was subject to a strict licensing approval system. Multinational record giants—including Universal, Warner, Sony, and EMI—as well as Hong Kong and Taiwan-based independent labels such as Rolling Stone and Fumao, among others, were legally prohibited from independently distributing physical albums (cassettes and CDs) by their overseas artists in the Mainland Chinese market; they were required to partner with Mainland publishers holding national publishing qualifications. China Scientific and Cultural Audio-Video Publishing Company, due to its state-level background and high approval efficiency, became one of the most crucial mainland publishing partners for numerous overseas record company.

Consequently, when compiling a database of physical Chinese-language pop music recordings, one will find that the packaging and disc labels of a large number of official mainland editions of albums by superstars from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Europe, and the United States (such as Jay Chou, Faye Wong, Eason Chan, Michael Jackson, etc.) bear the words “Published by China Scientific and Cultural Audio-Video Publishing Company” printed on the packaging and disc surfaces of their mainland-released, genuine CDs or cassettes, along with their exclusive ISBN/ISRC audio-visual publication codes. This gave rise to a record culture unique to Mainland China known as the “Imported Edition.”

These “Imported Edition” records, published under the name of China Scientific and Cultural Audio-Video Publishing Company, hold unique bibliographic value in archival studies. Due to the import censorship standards of the time, the track listings for this batch of records may differ from the original overseas versions (such as the removal of certain sensitive tracks or modifications to song lyrics); in terms of inner sleeve design, they typically included simplified Chinese translations of the lyrics or obi strips redesigned by mainland distributors (such as Busheng Dafeng and Xingwaixing).

Although this “overseas record label production + mainland company distribution + mainland publisher release” triangular collaboration model has gradually faded with the rise of digital streaming and the evolution of publishing policies, the tens of thousands of titles left behind by China Scientific and Cultural Audio-Video Publishing Company during the golden age of physical records constitute physical evidence and censorship archives of the Mainland Chinese pop music market during a specific historical period, representing an indispensable component of professional record collecting and edition research.