Dakou

In the recording industry, a dakou (Chinese: 打口) was a type of cut-out used in China to gain access to mostly rock music recordings that would otherwise be banned due to Chinese censorship.^[1]

These recordings, which were mainly shipped from the United States and Canada, were exported to China to be used as raw materials; however, they were instead sold through semi-legal markets to be listened to.^[2] Although they were cut, due to how tape recorders read the reels of tape loaded in a cassette from the centre to the margin, only the last parts of recordings were lost.^[3]