Opinion: Why Japan, China and India aren’t taking part in Eurovision Asia
- aussievision
- Aug 17
- 7 min read
Written by Michael Montenegro (IG: mikeclearwater)
OPINION: When Eurovision Song Contest Asia debuts in Bangkok this November, eleven broadcasters will take the stage - a modest, deliberately cautious start for the first continental spinoff the European Broadcasting Union has ever attempted.
After the initial 10 nations were announced by the EBU, there were teases that more countries would join.
With national final schedules now rolling out and just one more addition so far, with Mongolia, the Contest's actual shape is becoming locked in with each passing week.
And scan the list of participants confirmed, and something jumps out: the region's three biggest entertainment industries aren't on it.
Japan, China, and India, three of the world's largest music markets, are all but confirmed to be sitting out the inaugural edition.
That's no accident. Each has its own reasons, rooted in how its domestic industry already works, and those reasons say a lot about what Eurovision Asia is up against as it tries to grow.
Japan: An industry that never needed to export
Japan's music market is one of the biggest in the world, built almost entirely around domestic consumption rather than international reach.
The J-pop and idol industries run on talent agencies, in-house production, and physical CD and merchandise sales that remain unusually strong for a modern market.
Japan already has its own dense ecosystem of music shows, long-running award ceremonies like the Japan Record Awards, and idol competitions - the same cultural role a contest like Eurovision would otherwise fill.
The contrast with K-pop is instructive here. J-pop was built for domestic audiences; the modern K-pop industry from South Korea has been built around international export.
That difference alone is probably the clearest reason to doubt Japan's interest in Eurovision Asia. Both the TV and music industry have simply never needed a stage like this.
Japan has a mixed history with international competition
Japan's history with international music events sends mixed messages about how naturally Eurovision Asia might fit.
In recent decades, major international music events have tended to favour showcases and cultural exchange over competition. The UNESCO-backed Great Music Experience in Nara in 1994 brought Japanese and international musicians together for a celebratory performance, while the Tokyo Global Concert series hosted stars including Plácido Domingo, Renée Fleming and José Carreras. Japan Music Week similarly focused on networking and exposure.
But Japan also has a significant history of international competition. The World Popular Song Festival, held in Tokyo from 1970 to 1989, brought performers from around the world together in a country-versus-country song contest. It was even described as the "Eurovision of the East."
So Japan isn't unfamiliar with the concept behind Eurovision Asia. But its closest equivalent disappeared decades ago, while more recent international music events have largely focused on performance and cultural exchange rather than competition.
China: Domestic and international factors at play
China's absence is part structural, part political.
Structurally, China runs one of the world's largest music and entertainment markets almost entirely on its own terms, with domestic streaming platforms, homegrown talent-show formats, and a fast-growing C-pop and Mandopop scene.
State broadcasters have little history of joining Western-format contests built on open international voting, LGBTQ-associated branding, or content they can't pre-approve, and Eurovision checks several of those boxes at once.
And there is already evidence of that tension. Chinese broadcaster Mango TV aired Eurovision from 2015 to 2017, but had its rights terminated by the EBU in 2018 after censoring Ireland's performance, which featured two male dancers, as well as Albania's performance and rainbow flags. The EBU said the censorship was incompatible with its values of universality and inclusivity.
Then there's Taiwan. If Taiwan joined Eurovision Asia, China would very likely decline to participate alongside it, and given China's population and market size, organisers may be reluctant to risk losing it just to admit Taiwan.
But that raises a bigger question than Taiwan alone: is China actually prepared for the freewheeling style of politics that's baked into Eurovision as a format?
That loose tolerance for politics sits uneasily next to a system built around content pre-approval, tight state-broadcaster control, and a low threshold for what counts as an unacceptable message.
A format where any country's delegation might show up with a song carrying a political subtext nobody pre-cleared is a very different proposition from the tightly managed competition shows China already runs at home.
Whether Beijing would tolerate that kind of unpredictability, even in a slimmed-down Asian version of the contest, is arguably a bigger obstacle than the Taiwan question itself.
China has competed at Eurovision's rival: Intervision
China itself hasn't avoided Eurovision-style contests entirely, either. It has just avoided Eurovision specifically.
It took part in Intervision, the Russian-organised rival contest, sending a representative to its 2025 revival in Moscow alongside more than twenty other countries, including India.
That suggests China isn't opposed to the format itself so much as selective about which version of it. Intervision carries none of the geopolitical baggage Eurovision does.
However, China shouldn't be ruled out entirely. Rumours continue to circulate about possible participation, so its absence may not yet be final.
India: An industry built around film, not contests
India may have the most self-contained music industry of the three, mostly because Bollywood is such a juggernaut that little else needs to compete with it.
Indian music is tied to film and to regional-language industries, including Tamil, Telugu, Punjabi and others, far more than to standalone pop acts built for a contest format.
Bollywood soundtracks, playback singers and a handful of dominant labels supply much of what Indian audiences actually stream, and that machine already produces its own stars, award shows and sense of what a hit song sounds like.
That may help explain why a Eurovision-style contest has never really taken hold in India. The existing model already works and doesn't need a foreign format layered on top.
Though India does like international competition
That doesn't mean India has avoided international song contests altogether.
Mumbai was due to host Our Sound: The Asia-Pacific Song Contest in 2010, an early attempt to establish a Eurovision-style contest in the region, before the event was postponed and ultimately never took place. Mumbai was again linked to Eurovision Asia in 2025, when Bhutanese broadcaster BBS prematurely announced it as the host city before the EBU said no plans had yet been confirmed.
India also hosted the ABU TV Song Festival in New Delhi in 2022, though that was a showcase rather than a scored competition.
More tellingly, India took part in Intervision 2025 in Moscow, represented by Kashmiri singer-songwriter Rauhan Malik performing Ishq.
India was one of more than twenty countries competing that year, alongside China and eventual winner Vietnam. Its participation, combined with India's history of being linked to an Asian Eurovision-style contest, suggests the country isn't opposed to the format itself.
The Contest everyone else is building around them
Some of Eurovision Asia's current dynamics only make sense against this backdrop.
South Korea's participation is treated as especially significant precisely because it offsets the absence of Japan, China and India. Its outsized role as a global pop exporter lends the contest international legitimacy it might otherwise lack.
Australia, notably, has opted out entirely and will stay in the original European contest instead.
And organisers have kept the definition of "Asia" loose enough that Oceania could join later depending on how the first edition performs. Possible future entrants also include Kazakhstan, which has strong singing traditions and won the 2014 Turkvision Song Contest, a Eurovision-inspired competition for Turkic-speaking nations and regions. Other Central Asian countries could plausibly follow.
Broader cultural forces echo some of the tensions raised by China's political calculus.
Eurovision's European identity is closely tied to LGBTQ inclusion, but acceptance varies widely across Asia, and some broadcasters may censor content or opt out rather than air it. That dynamic could also discourage participation from parts of the Middle East.
None of this necessarily dooms the Contest, but it does suggest Eurovision Asia will need to build its own aesthetic and political vocabulary rather than simply import Europe's wholesale.
Organisers themselves are already signalling caution on this front, months before a single national final has aired.
At a press conference at Vienna's Wiener Stadthalle, Eurovision Asia executive producer Assaf Blecher said plainly:
"I don't think the Asian market is fully ready for full campy, gay, over the top performances."
He added that the reaction could vary widely from country to country: "Thailand and Philippines are not the same as Bhutan and Cambodia and Nepal, that's completely different territory", before landing on a hopeful but vague note about the contest finding "something special" from the mix.
Voxovation chief executive Peter Settman struck a similar tone, insisting the Contest is "truly a non-political event" while acknowledging there are "conflicts within the region that we need to overcome."
Coming this far ahead of the actual competition, the framing reads less like confidence and more like organisers getting ahead of a question they clearly expect to face regardless.
Can Eurovision Asia thrive without Japan, China and India?
Eurovision Asia's first edition is really a test of whether a shared regional platform can work at all in a part of the world where the biggest players don't need one.
Japan, China, and India aren't missing by accident. Each has built an industry so self-sufficient that a Eurovision-style contest offers little it doesn't already have, whether that's Japan's idol economy, China's tightly controlled domestic market, or India's film-driven music business.
Whether Eurovision Asia eventually pulls any of them in, or simply settles into a smaller, ASEAN-centered contest that doesn't need them, will likely decide whether this becomes a lasting institution or a curiosity that never quite escapes its modest beginnings.
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