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Strategy Videogame Upsets Chinese, Gets Banned
An anonymous reader writes "China's State News Agency, Xinhua reports that China's Ministry of Culture has banned a computer game for 'distorting history and damaging China's sovereignty and territorial integrity'. Paradox's PC strategy game 'Hearts of Iron', was accused of distorting historical facts in describing Manchuria, West Xinjiang, and Tibet as independent sovereign countries in the maps of the game. 'All these severely distort historical facts and violate China's gaming and Internet service regulations,' the Ministry's Game Products Censorship Committee said. 'The game should be immediately prohibited.' [via China Digital]"
Unfortunately, I don't have good hard figures on the death toll from China's genocide in Tibet (as opposed to the genocide committed against ethnic Chinese during the great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, estimates for which range between 30-60 million), and Rummel doesn't have an seperate index entry for Tibet in Death by Goverment. Here's a protest poster that claims 1.2 million Tibetans have died as the results of China's occupation. We probably won't know the real number until (like the Soviet Union) after China is liberated from Communism at some future date.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
So the Chinese government is censoring free speech? Do you support that, or not?
Everytime you go to Walmart, Target, and other "Made in China" clearing houses, you are supporting China, and placing another fatal blow to locally owned American small business.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
But it is inaccurate. This is communst dogma at it's height and it's an ego trip about geopgraphy. Tibet had been a long-standing independent tributary to imperial China and was not a true part of China until the reds forced it into becoming a secular province in the 50s and kidnapped their second highest religious leader. And at the time of the Tibetan takeover, let's remember that the Republic of China was internationally recognized as China, not the People's Republic of China until the 70s. It's completely inaccurate to leave Manchuria out as a separate entity (sovereignty is up in the air though) because Japan occupied most of northeastern China and did in fact set up the puppet state of The Empire of Manchuria. So I can't see how you got a +5 insightful by not knowing any of the history that the evil communist Chinese government are supposedly trying to rewrite.
one commentator put it "Imagine if the Nazis upon invading France had pulled down every church except Norte Dame, and burned and looted every museum except the Louvre. That's what China did in Tibet."
He forgot "forcibly sterilized", "imprisoned & tortured clergy", etc. but I guess the guy didn't have a spare half hour to extend his analogy. The Chinese gov't = teh suck. Evil, hypocritical old men. Thank god they're our allies (mostly).
Freedom: "I won't!"
Nice to see they are keeping up on their censorship of games. They're in good company, what with Wolfenstein still being illegal in Germany.
If you use your real name, it won't be long until China will require you to go through a military background check to get a visa to visit. Believe me, it happened to me.
The source of China's claim to Tibet is actually pretty bizarre. During the nomad/warrior phase of Tibet's history, they exacted as tribute, an Chinese imperial princess. Later, when Tibet was less formidable,this became a source of imperial claims by China of Tibet. This was subsequently picked up by the Communists in the modern era.
This is just another example of how a tenuous claim gets respect just by being repeated long enough. However, as an American I'm hardly in a position to criticize China, since a lot of our property was stolen from our Indians through treaty violations.
The real reason for Tibet to become autonomous would be that most of the people born there want independence.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I was in the US Army in West Germany in '85 guarding the East German border. Some German friends brought over Risk and we played a little. They explained to us that due to sensitivity about their Nazi past, in German Risk you don't 'conquer' the world, you 'liberate' it. My friends at the time indicated that this was a matter of German law, but I don't know if that was true or not. At the time I thought it was funny, but now I don't think I'd find such a law to be very funny anymore.
TW
The Chinese government is "EVIL" but ti's effective. They are also mostly "Fair". If you follow their rules. You tend to live a normal happy life. If you do not they kill you. Thus, 1 million tibetains had the notiosn of fighting back. They are dead. The rest mostly shut up. Asian cultures aren't as arrogant and stubborn as Islamic/ Arabic cultures. They'd rather subsist under a tyrant then die under a freedom fighter.
Thats why chinese tend not to have too much internal strife. I know I'm chinese and I visit frequently and have a large part of my family there. There are many things that go on that are un fair oppresive and such, but the Gov does try to keep order for the normal folk. For a large number of the population, life isn't bad.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Heh. Perhaps you haven't had the pleasure of reading George Orwell's 1984, in which Orwell vividly describes the state of the world in a future he feared. In 1984, the government rewrites history on a daily basis. This could be something small, like modifying what Big Brother said about an individual some months ago. Or it could be something big, like convincing the world that one country had always been their ally, while another had always been their enemy; especially when the opposite had been true the day before.
This might seem crazy when you read it in a book, but these things happen all the time in real life, even here in the United States. For example, the ACLU, the so-called American Civil Liberties Union, is currently pursuing legal action against the County of Los Angeles because that county's seal includes a small image of a Christian cross, symbolizing the Mission that was the first settlement in the area. This is a form of rewriting history, as is the removal of Paul Revere from children's history books, to be replaced with some female who apparently did something similar, to be "politically correct." Yes, this has already been done in many schools.
When China decides that it doesn't like certain things, it will talk about them as if they did not exist. I wouldn't be surprised if the entire education system there teaches people things that are wrong, so when the Chinese people hear something like this, they think it's the truth, and that Tibet was never owned by anybody else.
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.
Scenario 1: The US bombs a gathering of rebels. The rebels claim it was a "wedding party" (everyone has guns at wedding parties, right?). US and foreign journalists pick up conflicting reports.
Scenario 2: The US bombs a wedding party. US spokesmen claim it was a gathering of rebels (everyone has guns at wedding parties, right?). US and foreign journalists pick up conflicting reports.
Now, I won't say which I think is more likely. Are the rebels lying, or did the US make a mistake?
(Most of the rest of your criticisms are dead on. This particular one just irks me.)
Human/Ranger/Zangband
They'd rather subsist under a tyrant then die under a freedom fighter.
I used to work with a number of Chinese scientists who'd come to the US for grad school. Some of them clearly intended to stay here as long as possible, but others were more nationalistic. I asked one student (who had pictures of Zhou Enlai and the aftermath of the Naking massacre on his desk) why obviously intelligent people like him continued to put up with the Communists. He said it was because the situation in China kept improving: they now have some form of capitalism, better technology, continuing superpower status, and so on. And as you suggest, as long as you follow the rules you'll do pretty well. He said that if things got worse, they might be more inclined to want a change of government, but right now nobody wanted to rock the boat. I guess if your parents lived through the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, modern China must seem pretty terrific.
I've heard similar claims made about the US, although they're usually made by people who think we're not communist enough.
What? Do you have cites to back up that claim?
Maybe you mean something like in exchanging diplomats?
I think that Tibet was a very secluded area that rarely allowed any outsiders in. The last thing they would have wanted was to exchange diplomats or have foreign embassies present. So from that point of view, you might be technically correct, but only technically correct.
But in fact, Tibet was recognized as an independent country. If a mountaineer wanted permission to climb Everest from the north, he needed Tibet's permission, not China's. And that permission was not often given.
China's claim to Tibet, as far as I understand, is that a Chinese baby was taken to Tibet to become the Dalai Lama at one point.
Okay, I'll play the deconstructionism game. "2 + 2 = 4". Is this objective or subjective truth? If the latter, what's the opposing truth? Or is this sum just a piece of propaganda which has been perpetrated over the course of millennia?
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
I agree with this sentiment. However i'd like to add a caveat. We are all aware of how history is re-written and adjusted by the powers in charge, and this may well be more of that. However, on the flip side it is not in the public's best interest to have fact distorted via a public medium. (which i have no idea of what is historical fact in this dispute).
For instance, there continue to be groups who claim the holocaust never happened. This opinion may be censored by a government, and the mere cat it is censored does not make it true.
I suppose the moral here is caveat emptor, watch out who you are buying your truth from.
If you wish to follow that line of "property ownership", the US bought much of the land claimed by Mexico from the French. Now if you'd said "around a third" then I'd agree.
OTOH, what gave either the French or the Mexican govt. the right to claim that land? In the case of the French it wasn't even adverse possession, merely that somebody marked it out on a map and claimed it. (I don't think that the French even knew that the Russians were claiming the same land.)
Now if the Mexican govt. were considered successors in interest to the Aztecs then they could properly claim land up as far as New England... but typically aboriginal claimants were given the short shrift, when they were lucky.
Still, none of this conflicts with the claim that most of China was originally sovereign countries. In fact, that tended to happen periodicly even after the Emperors appeared. Under a weak emperor the country would fall apart, and the districts at the edges would go their own ways. Sometimes it would get so bad that even provinces close to Beiging would declare their independance. Then a rising Emperor would claim the old provinces, and reclaim them using some combination of diplomacy and military might. Most other countries don't have a long enough history of being the same country to show the same effects, but you can see it in action if you look carefully. (China has more definite borders than most countries. The mountains on two sides, the ocean on another, and a desert on the remaining one.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.