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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.
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!"
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
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.