Slashdot Mirror
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."
The Falun Gong Tigers...
Great Britain has banned all references to the "United States" and insists that any software produced in "the colonies" or elsewhere reflect this view.
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
Seriously, what's next? Banning references to an independent Tibe- >>
$6.21 is the number of the beast before sales tax. Meh.
This is still a country with a Communist government (modified, granted, but still not democratic) who has never recognized the independence of Taiwan, who
blocks its citizens from portions of the internet at the national level, and brutally rolled over demonstrators in Tienaman (sp) square. What do you think they would go?
The worst part of the whole thing is that China is a capitalist's dream, cheap labor, who have no chance to redress grievances. No wonder we can't compete.
To those who say that economic capitalism leads to democracy, we'll just have to wait and see. I'm not holding my breath.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
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.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/01/opinion/01kristo f.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
China's Donkey Droppings
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
For the last century, the title of "most important place in the world" has belonged to the United States, but that role seems likely to shift in this century to China.
So what are China's new leaders, Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, really like? Are they visionaries who are presiding over the greatest explosion of wealth the world has ever known? Or are they ruthless thugs who persecute Christians, Falun Gong adherents, labor leaders and journalists in a desperate attempt to maintain their dictatorship?
There's some evidence for both propositions, and they are probably both true to some degree.
When Mr. Hu and Mr. Wen rose to the helm of the Communist Party two years ago, many Chinese hoped they would bring a new openness to a nation that is dynamic economically but stagnant intellectually. Instead, China has become more repressive.
The repression has now engulfed a member of The New York Times's family. Zhao Yan, a researcher for the Beijing bureau of The Times, has been detained by the authorities since September and is not allowed to communicate with his family or lawyers.
Mr. Zhao is accused of leaking state secrets, a very serious charge that could lead to a decade in prison. China's government may believe that he was behind the September scoop by The Times's Beijing bureau chief, Joseph Kahn, that China's former leader, Jiang Zemin, was about to retire from his last formal position.
While The Times's policy is, wisely, never to comment on the sources of articles, my own private digging indicates that Mr. Zhao was not the source for that scoop. He is innocent of everything except being a fine journalist who, before joining The Times, wrote important articles in the Chinese press about corruption.
(In fairness, sending journalists to prison for doing their job is not an exclusively Chinese phenomenon. Several American journalists - Jim Taricani of NBC, Judith Miller of this newspaper and Matthew Cooper of Time - may be sent to U.S. prisons in the next month or two for refusing to reveal their sources.)
Mr. Zhao's case is depressingly similar to that of another Chinese journalist, Jiang Weiping. He is serving a six-year sentence for "revealing state secrets," even though his real crime was exposing corruption.
"China has changed so much economically, but not politically," Jiang Weiping's wife, Li Yanling, told me. "It's a puzzle to me."
The authorities ordered Ms. Li to keep quiet about her husband's arrest, and detained her when she didn't. The couple's daughter, now 15, was traumatized at losing first her father and then her mother to the Chinese prison system. When Ms. Li was finally released, the daughter called her constantly from school to make sure that she had not been arrested again.
Mr. Zhao's arrest is just the latest in a broad crackdown in China. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that 42 journalists are now in prison in China, more than in any other country.
"There was a period of openness, a period of hope, when the new leaders first came to power," said Jiao Guobiao, a journalism professor at Beijing University. "But now they've consolidated power, and everything has closed up again."
Mr. Jiao should know. He wrote an essay this year denouncing censorship, and it was immediately censored. Now the government has banned Mr. Jiao from teaching.
I've felt this cooling as well. I was planning to visit China this month, but the government has declined to give me a visa. It's the first time I've been refused, and the State Security Ministry may have worried that I would write a column about its unjust imprisonment of Mr. Zhao.
I love China, and I share its officials' distaste for those who harm it. That's why I'm angry that hard-liners in Beijing are presenting China to the world as repressive, fragile, ty
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.
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.
(Disclaimer: This is not a troll, I really think it's on-topic, and worth discussion)
Please remind why America is not at war with China? My knowledge on this subject is limited, but my checklist (based on the precedent set by the "justifications" for the war on Iraq) suggests that they should be:
(X) Totalitarian government
(X) Autocracy government
(X) Possesses Weapons of Mass Destruction
(X) No human rights
(X) Unstable, Irresponsible leadership
(X) Inhumane treatment of its people
(X) Government oppression and censorship
If these are the valid reasons, could someone please explain why America is not at war with China?
The difference between a republic and a people's republic is the difference between a jacket and a straight jacket.
There is a lot of ignorance here about the difference between the Chinese and Western ways of defining, and thus changing, reality.
If a Western government banned a game or a particular statement, it would be a move against that particular game or statement. When the Chinese government does it, it's one tiny part of the general full-time business of defining the version of reality they want to be percieved (and which is percieved) as the canonical Chinese one.
China is a large country, containing large areas which were not China until quite recently and still have major anti-Chinese native populations, and large areas whose interests conflict with each other and with Beijing's interests. The Chinese machine -- 'leadership' is the wrong word because it is a culture-wide effort -- has therefore always worked hard to promote a unified pro-Chinese vision in which the answer to the questions 'Should we not be part of China? Can China do bad?' is an automatic, instinctive 'no', so automatic that the question cannot really be asked at all.
If you want to get a feel for this, try reading XinHua in parallel with your other news sources. At first you will note differences here and there but over time you will come to see two different, parallel world histories going on; the XinHua one and the 'real' one.
But the true effect is only achieved when the whole dialectic of discussion at all levels, not just of government-controlled news sources, assumes the artificial reality, and this effect has been achieved brilliantly -- although lately they have been resorting to extreme nationalism to keep it up. The abuse of foreign soccer teams, the constant rehearsing of Japanese, British and French crimes in schools, the scholarly books on how Tibet and Goguryeo (google it, I don't know the right romanization though) and this and that bit of India have been stolen away by evil foreign interests but have been returned to China by the force of truth and sincerity -- it's all part of one absolutely brilliant concerted effort of which the banning of this game is a tiny, tiny, tiny, part.
I think the creation of not merely a new Chinese history but a whole Chinese reality, basically in 5 short decades, is probably the greatest cultural achievement of the previous century.
Or not.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Sometimes it just seems like the leaders of some government are just childlike and whiny. OK, so some people don't see Taiwan as part of China: get over it you bunch of babies.
Are they really that incapable of being exposed to a different view of the world? It's not like a stupid video game representing Taiwan as its own country is going to make China break up or something. Taiwan really *is* an independent country, whether the People's Republic of China likes it or not. These are the realities people: stop sticking your heads in the sand.
I hate the stupid ultrasensitive crap that some governments (or even societies) get all upset about. Pretty much every country has some minor stupid thing they get all uptight about.
Argentina get all pissy about the Falkland Islands, which are hardly worth the trouble.
The United States seems to spit fire if anyone talks about it stifling democracy in other countries or waging war for reasons other than "freedom", or burning flags (which causes harm to so many people!).
India and Pakistan stop thinking rationally every time the subject of Kashmir comes up.
Turkey frothes at the mouth every time the Kurds are mentioned.
Some things just aren't as important as people seem to think they are. It's time to grow up, it's time to calm down.
China, wake up! You are being ruled by a pack of brutal psychopaths that only care about their own pampered asses! Overthrow them and their corrupt government. You are many and they are few, only fear can keep you from the freedom to do, read, and think whatever you wish. Only the dictators that rule your contry are keeping you from taking you rightful place as one of the world's great nations! Remeber Tiananmen!
That should pretty much put an end to slashdot's Chinese readership. If a revolution starts in China tomorow, I get credit for starting it!
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
(X) Possesses Weapons of Mass Destruction
(X) Possesses 200 Million Man Army
(X) Possesses Cheap/Slave Labor
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
a Communist government (modified, granted, but still not democratic)
Would you PLEASE, for the love of all that is good and holy, learn the freakin' difference between "communist" and "totalitarian".
A country can be communist AND totalitarian, but that doesn't make those two things interchangeable.
The worst part of the whole thing is that China is a capitalist's dream, cheap labor, who have no chance to redress grievances. No wonder we can't compete.
To those who say that economic capitalism leads to democracy, we'll just have to wait and see. I'm not holding my breath.
See, China is moving away from communism, but not from totalitarianism. You've noticed that capitalism doesn't magically bring about the end of totalitarian states: Please adjust your vocabulary accordingly.
You can't take the sky from me...
Well I am Chinese though I was not raised in China. Most Chinese I know from the mainland support the reunification with Taiwan. According to Taiwanese, about half of Taiwanese support China and half don't. It's rather funny as there is one Taiwanese here who does support China and the other doesn't and they hate each other's guts. The other funniest moment in the Taiwan debate was in a Chinese forum where I saw someone from the mainland accuse the Taiwanese of being a "Han traitor" (I thought that no-one used that term anymore outside of period dramas. Then again I know mainland Chinese still read classical poems).
Westerners really don't understand the Chinese mentality. Chinese thinking is cyclical and long-term. As the famous line in Three Kingdoms goes,
"Domains under heaven, after a long period of union, tends to divide; after a long period of division, tends to unite." Division and reunification are important elements of how Chinese believe the world works. Many Chinese don't see the current situation in terms of the present, they take the long-term view which for Chinese is that the Han Chinese on Taiwan will eventully be reunited with China because that's how it has always worked in the past. It is true that many times splinter kingdoms of Han Chinese have broken off and were reunited by military force. Anyway, the point is the Chinese on the mainland think that reunification is inevitable. It might not happen soon but it will happen. This puts a cramp on negotiations as you can imagine. The most important thing to remember is that Chinese often see present events as filtered through thousands of years of Chinese imperial history.
The second thing is that to Chinese division is seen as bad and unification is good. (I suspect this comes from the misery of multiple civil wars). Hence there are strong elements of "using force for their (the Taiwanese) own good". There is a strong belief amognst mainland Chinese that the reunification of Taiwan with China will actually *benefit* the Taiwanese because the horrible division will be healed and the Han Chinese can act together as one unit to take on the world stronger than ever, together. They will cite China's growing economic and military power as signs of how the Taiwanese will benefit with joining with China. There is a belief that most Taiwanese support reunification and it is interference of a few mischief makers and US interference that is stopping the masses in Taiwan from joing with China. They take me aside and tell me that patriots in Taiwan are stealing technology secrets and passing them to China as a sign of their loyalty. A similar but different attitude can be seen in regards to places like Tibet. It is believed that before the Chinese takeover, the people of Tibet where barbaric savages living horrible miserable little lives where they are starving and oppressed. Now the Chinese government is taking over, the wonders of Chinese civilisation is being brought to them and they are now becoming educated civilised people who are capable of living in the modern world and are much happier than they were before.
Now before you laugh at this, please compare the Chinese attitude to the US attitude to Iraq.
As for Tiannamen. Many Chinese believe that the government was right in doing what they did. The students were threatening to bring down the government and hence in the interests of stability the government had to act to ensure that the country remained intact. The students were no more than a filthy band of rebels who were trying to take power as has happened many times in Chinese history. It's sad that the Chinese government had to use force but really the students' brought it on themselves.
There is really very little support for Communism BTW. Most of the support is based on (1) Nationalism (2) Paranoia towards the west derived from Western colonialism in the 19th century (3) Traditional Chinese political values and Confucian principles and (4) Desire for a stable government for peace and prosperity. I sense very little desire for democracy and freedom. As I have been asked, "What will democracy do for us?"
Taiwan really *is* an independent country, whether the People's Republic of China likes it or not. These are the realities people: stop sticking your heads in the sand.
As soon as Taiwan's President can say that without being attacked by the mainland, you'll be right.
The enemies of Democracy are
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."
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
>> They don't want to be "independent." They want to be China.
Excellent point.
Both of these regimes began as opposing sides in the Chinese civil war. From the point of view of the victors -- the government in Beijing -- Taiwan is a rebellious province occupied by the enemy in the waning days of that war. From the Taiwanese point of view, the Beijing government is illegitimate.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
What'd happen then? They'd try to justify their genocide of the Armenians?
Sometimes I think we need a powerful alien race to come over and set us straight. "Ok, Turkey and Iraq, you're splitting up. The Kurds have been more than patient, and will get their own country. No, you don't get any rights to their oil. China, shut up about Taiwan. You can't have it. And since you've been such a baby about it, you're losing Tibet as well. North Korea, your leader is a nut and is being committed to a mental institution. Time for you to find someone new. Make sure he isn't crazy this time or we'll be back. Zimbabwe, you need a new leader. India and Pakistan, this Kashmir thing is ridiculous. Here's the deal: everyone has to move out of it, to either India or Pakistan (their choice). Then, we're making it into a Park. No one can live there except rangers. Sri Lanka, you're splitting up. The Tamils get their own half of the island. And finally, United States, you're splitting up too. You're too powerful, and have been electing idiots lately. All the states west of New Mexico, including Alaska and Hawaii, and now a separate country. You east coast states will have to learn to get along without all of California's tax revenue, and without all the natural resources of the West. Plus, since Nevada is in the new country, they get to keep Area 51. You can keep the wrecked ship of ours that you found, but we want the bodies back."
There are whole chunks of real estate that once was owned/ruled by a different government. So just because it once was, doesn't mean squat now. Or else we have to give back the Americas to England, France, Spain, Portugual, Russia... not to mention the Native American Indians, Most of Europe would revert to some one else as would just about every other square inch on this planet that a previous landlord wanted to collect the rent on again.
Too lazy to create a sig...
...Argentina get all pissy about the Falkland Islands, which are hardly worth the trouble....
and on that note, a word of advice to any foreigners enjoying themselves in a pub in downtown London (with too much to drink):
It's a bad idea to suggest to a crowd of Brits that England should just get the hell out of Ireland. I mean, why not make it simple and just let each country have their own island, right?
All joking aside, nobody found it funny and I was pushed down several times and nearly beaten up until the doorman pulled me out of there.
As an American, I really didn't realize that what I said would illicit such a violent response.
The following day, I asked some of my friends (and their parents) why it was such a sensitive issue, but they just rolled their eyes at me with disgust. Finally, google was my friend and I finally learned how deep into British culture this religious clash actually goes. Scary.
More accurate history lesson...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Taiwan
http://users2.ev1.net/~turton/history.html
The Chinese Nationalists hardly "founded" the country of Taiwan... Invaded is more like it.
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender