Authorities cut four songs from the band's 2002 greatest hits collection, 40 Licks, and Jagger said officials have asked them not to play those at Saturday's concert in Shanghai, along with one new one he didn't name. "We kind of expected that. We didn't expect to come to China and not be censored," Jagger said at a news conference marking the band's debut appearance in the mainland in their 40-year career.

An original request to alter the song list was made ahead of the band's planned 2003 China concerts that were cancelled due to the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome. Jagger said he'd hoped the request would be dropped but, "then it came back." "Fortunately, we have 400 more songs that we can play, so it's not really an issue," Jagger said.

The original four songs cut were Brown Sugar, Honky Tonk Woman, Beast of Burden, and Let's Spend the Night Together, apparently due to their suggestive lyrics. Jagger didn't say what the new addition was, but it was believed to be Rough Justice, the opening track of their new album, A Bigger Bang, which includes a lyric that is a synonym for rooster.

"I don't have to tell you censorship exists in China as in other places," Jagger said.

Though visiting for the first time as a band, the Stones' presence has aroused none of the fan frenzy that has greeted them at other locations on their worldwide A Bigger Bang tour.

The band is relatively unknown in China, which was mired in communist isolation at the height of the band's fame in the 1960s and 1970s.

While rock has gained an audience here - music by bands such as Nirvana and Pink Floyd are widely available on pirated DVDs - the airwaves tend to be dominated by saccharine Chinese pop tunes. Last year's biggest musical event was a televised American Idol-style song contest, Super Girl.

However, Jagger said he hoped a planned nationwide television broadcast of the concert by the government's China Central Television would boost exposure for the music. And he said Cui Jian, known widely as the father of Chinese rock, would join the Stones on stage during the concert for a duet before the 8,000 fans at the Shanghai Grand Stage - an audience roughly 1.2 million smaller than the one that witnessed their free concert last year in Rio de Janeiro.

Most of those Shanghai tickets are believed to have been sold to non-Chinese, according to the local press. With prices between 300 yuan to 3,000 yuan ($37 to $370 US), tickets cost more than a monthly wage of most Chinese. The newspaper Shanghai Morning Post also complained in an article that only one Chinese media outlet had been allowed to cover the band's arrival on Thursday. "The Rolling Stones come to Shanghai, but they're only performing for foreigners," read the headline on the front page of the paper's entertainment section.