China upset about Guns N' Roses album

ENTERTAINMENT - A newspaper published by China's ruling Communist Party is calling the latest Guns N' Roses album as an attack on the nation.

Delayed since recording began in 1994, the album Chinese Democracy hit stores in the United States on Sunday, although it is unlikely to be sold legally in China, where censors maintain tight control over films, music and publications.

In an article today headlined "American band releases album venomously attacking China," the Global Times said unidentified Chinese Internet users had described the album as part of a plot to "grasp and control the world using democracy as a pawn."

The song could be heard online today and it was not immediately possible to tell whether China's Internet monitors were seeking to block access to it. Monitors use content filters that highlight and sometimes block messages containing words such as the word "democracy". Some Internet users are combining English and Chinese characters in their postings about the album to skirt such monitoring.