C-pop is an abbreviation for Chinese popular music (), a loosely defined musical genre by artists originating from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan (the Greater China region). This also includes countries where Chinese languages are used by parts of the population, such as Singapore and Malaysia. C-pop is used as an umbrella term covering not only Chinese pop but also R&B, ballads, Chinese rock, Chinese hip hop and Chinese ambient music, although Chinese rock diverged during the early 1990s. There are currently three main subgenres within C-pop: Cantopop, Mandopop and Hokkien pop. The gap between Cantopop and Mandopop has been narrowing in the new millennium. Hokkien pop, initially strongly influenced by Japanese enka, has been re-integrating into C-pop and narrowing its trend of development towards Mandopop. Chinese popular music in China was initially a vehicle for the Cultural Revolution and Maoist ideologies; however, during the country's extensive political and cultural changes of the past 50 years, it has lost much political significance; and now closely resembles the styles of Taiwanese Mandopop, Cantopop, K-pop and J-pop, from Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Japan, respectively. History The term shidaiqu (meaning "music of the era" or "popular music") is used to describe all different types of music sung in Mandarin and other Chinese dialects recorded in China from 1920 to 1952, then in Hong Kong until the 1960s. Shanghai was the main hub of the Chinese popular music recording industry, and an important name of the period is composer Li Jinhui. Buck Clayton is credited with bringing American jazz influence to China and the music gained popularity in hangout quarters of nightclubs and dancehalls of major cities in the 1920s. A number of privately run radio stations from the late 1920s to the 1950s played C-pop. Around 1927, Li Jinhui composed "The Drizzle" ("") sung by his daughter Li Minghui (), and this song is generally regarded as the first Chinese pop song. It fuses jazz and Chinese folk music – the tune is in the style of a traditional pentatonic folk melody, but the instrumentation is similar to that of an American jazz orchestra. Around the time of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, and the Chinese Civil War, pop music was seen as a leftist undisturbed distraction. After the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II C-pop has been marketed, produced and branded regionally. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) established