Bob Dylan left blowin' in the wind after China bans concerts

 He may be 68 and long past his protest days, but it seems Bob Dylan is still considered a subversive threat in China.
The government, which remains in Communist hands 20 years after the fall of the Berlin wall, has refused to grant him a permit to perform.
They do not want the Chinese public to hear him sing potentially dangerous tracks as The Times They Are a-Changin'.

Times They Are a-Changin'? No thanks! China's denial of a performance permit to Bob Dylan means the protest singer has had to cancelled dates in South East Asia

The American singer, who had been looking forward to his first performance in mainland China, was due to sing in Beijing and China.
He has cancelled concerts in Hong Kong and South Korea.
Jeffrey Wu, the head of operations of Dylan's promoter Brokers Brothers Herald, said: 'China's Ministry of Culture did not give us permission to stage concerts in Beijing and Shanghai, so we had no alternative to scrap plans for a South East Asian tour.'


Mr Wu added that the 'chance to play in China was the main attraction for him [Dylan]. When that fell through, everything else was called off.'
The South East Asian dates were to come off the back of a string of performances in Japan as part of his Never Ending Tour.

Smoking gun: Björk's pro-Tibet slogans at a 2008 concert in Shanghai made  officials nervous about Western singers

Dylan, who performs 100 concerts a year, may have lost his chance to play following the controversy caused by Icelandic singer Björk in 2008.
After singing Declare Independence at a concert in Shanghai she chanted 'Tibet! Tibet!'
Permits for musicians to play on the mainland have since been tightly controlled.
The Culture ministry said Bjork's performance had 'hurt the feelings of the Chinese people'.
Since then, it was rumoured that the collapse of a planned Oasis concert in Shanghai last year was because the band had played at a Free Tibet concert in New York in 1997.
The Chinese government, however, blamed the financial worries of the promoter for the cancellation.
'What Bjork did definitely made life very difficult for other performers. They are very wary of what will be said by performers on stage now,' said Mr Wu.
He also added that Dylan's past as a counter-culture hero may have worried the Chinese authorities.
The singer political profile was first raised in 1963 after he stormed off The Ed Sullivan show in the U.S. when producers banned the song his planned to perform.
During that decade he created many highly political songs such as Only A Pawn In Their Game, which he sang during protest marches in Washington.
But by the 1970s his tone and style had become more laid back and he attended less demonstrations.