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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.
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.
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?"
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.