Pop 'singers' caught in fake vocals

China is getting tougher on fraudulent entertainment performances, a crackdown dramatized by the nation's first investigation into a "lip sync" incident during a concert in Chengdu, Sichuan Province.

"Lip sync," short for lip synchronized, means that the performer silently mouths the lyrics of a song into a dead microphone, fooling the audience, which is actually listening to pre-recorded songs.

The evidence obtained by the local cultural authority showed that two female sing-ers, Fang Ziyuan and Ying Youcan, lip-sync-ed their guest appearance at a Chinese pop diva's concert on September 19, the Western China Metropolis Daily reported.

The regulations on commercial performances, issued by the Ministry of Culture, ban lip sync in "live" commercial performances.

The tightened regulations were put into effect last October, stipulating that, "Lip sync is deceitful to viewers and violators will face a fine up to 10,000 yuan ($1,465)."

Inspection authorities will make random checks from time to time. Any concert production company caught using fake vocals more than once within two years will have its license revoked. Individual performers who lip-sync songs will be banned for life from performing onstage.

"We videotaped the whole concert and monitored the multiple audio tracks," said Tan Wanchun, vice director of the culture market inspection bureau of Chengdu.

Tan told the newspaper that the event's sound technician at first tried to conceal the hard drive containing the audio file of the September 19 concert.

File data proved that the two singers' microphones did not show any transmission signals while the performers were supposedly singing on stage and that the songs were pre-recorded.

Since the concert, the two performers have disappeared from public view. The local authority published an official notice in Guangming Daily early this month, followed by a couple of penalty notices that failed to reach the singe