China Bans Game Recognizing Taiwan Independence

OhioJoe writes "MSNBC is reporting that China has banned a soccer game that depicts Taiwan as independent. Violators are threatened with $1200 fines. From the article: "The game, 'Soccer Manager 2005', contained content that harmed China's sovereignty and territorial integrity and violated Chinese law, the Xinhua news agency reported on Tuesday."

Comments

Re:So many peanuts, so little gallery.

[The Cisco Kid]

You are assuming that the Chinese government allows its citizens to access this site.

I would think that if they had any power to do so, slashdot would *definately* be one of the sites they would block. Way too many opinions that conflict with the official CN views.

This is actually quite common

[kusanagi374]

This is not an isolated case. Back when Windows 95 was released, Microsoft had problems in India because the timezone worldmap (when setting date & time) wouldn't highlight Kashmir as part of India. To deal with that problem, they just removed country highlighting for good.

They'll probably just release an updated version of the game without Taiwan and move along.

Re:Huh?

[WARM3CH]

Well, some countries are very sensitive about such issues. Even people can be very sensitive about it. Take this recent example: You know that some Arab countries insist on using the name "Arabian Gulf" to call whan we know as "Persian Gulf". Recently, after mentioning this second name in some national geography publications, a large group of Persian weblogs and sites helped making a google bomb. Try searching for "Arabian Gulf" in google and select the first results and see it for yourself.

I am an student from China

[cyfer2000]

It is kind emotional unacceptable to claim Taiwan an independent country. My grandfather resisted Japanese invasion when he was young. Several of his brothers died during that war. My roommate's grandfather was born in Taiwan, fought with Japanese in Taiwan during the 1930's and 1940's. At last, we got Taiwan back after we beat the Japanese in WWII. And now some of the Taiwan politicians claim they are Japanese and claim Taiwan an independent country. It's outrageous.

We Chinese are peace people. We don't have too much ambitious. We enjoy our food and tea. But we don't like Japanese grab our land, or some "want to be Japanese".

I am not a communist, I don't like communism, we Chinese people don't talk about it much anymore, though US government classify China as a communism country. But I love my country, my nation, just as you guys love yours. I won't allow my country broken. We won't, just like US won't allow the southern separate from the Union, and Canada won't allow Quebec claim independence.

There is always culture difference between portions of a country, but this doesn't mean the country should be broke into parts.

As the presidency of Taiwan, Jacky Chan said my words, "the biggest joke in the world."

Re:I am an student from China

[Anonymous Coward]

I was born in Taiwan and have very close ties there because my sister and my entire extended family are still there. We all follow the Taiwanese politics, both in international as well as domestic issues, very closely.

There are quite a few things I would like to address here. First off, my family has been in Taiwan for more generations than we can count. My grandmother lived under the Japanese rule when she was younger and she has told us many stories from that time. In fact, as many older Taiwanese people are now coming out to say, the Japanese treated us fairly and equally in almost everything. They were willing to provide education to the mass, allowed us to run our own business and even help the economy as long as they were respected as the government. They were not oppressive but rather taught the Taiwanese to embrace our own identity as well as theirs. The only thing they prevented us from was the government. As far as I can tell, you know nothing about the way the Japanese people treated the Taiwanese. Additionally, no one is claiming to be "Japanese" in Taiwan. We are not "Chinese." We are not "Japanese." We are Taiwanese.

Secondly, the Chinese government had long lost control of Taiwan, even before WWII. The native Taiwanese can not even recall the last time China had any established governing power in Taiwan. We remember the Dutch; we remember the Spaniards; we remember the Japanese. But as far as the native Taiwanese are concerned, we did not have any long standing ties to mainland China before Chiang Kai-Shek and his party came over. Even then, we only embraced them because they looked like us and spoke our language. They were "our" people. The newcomers claimed that the Japanese were evil when in reality, they were worse than the previous government. They depreciated OUR currencies against their own and sent our population into poverty, simply so they could be rich with what little they came over with. They killed our educated people. They suppressed the voices that questioned them. They changed everything to their advantage. They took our land, took our money, confiscated our wealth and intimidated us by force. And now we realize that half the people that came over weren't even educated or skilled in anything. It is only recently that people are speaking up. Before this past decade, we lived in fear of being taken and killed in the middle of the night. Because of this, we are acknowledging that the Japanese were better than the so-called fellow "Chinese."

Don't you dare equate this situation to that of the US Civil War or Quebec separating from Canada. If anything, this resembles the American Revolution. (I am very knowledgeable of American history.) The Taiwanese are nothing like the mainland Chinese in culture or thoughts. And don't you dare claim that we are the "same" people. If that is the case, then Singapore should also be part of China.... In fact, didn't all of eastern Asia come from China? That means the Japanese, Koreans, Thais, Vietnamese, etc. are all "Chinese" too.

As for Jackie Chan's statement... why doesn't he take a look at the American election and call it a joke? At least the Taiwanese president won by majority. In fact, has Jackie Chan listened to the voices of the his fellow people in Hong Kong who are protesting against the Chinese government and in support of Taiwanese independence?