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Battlefield 4 Banned In China
hypnosec writes "The Chinese government has officially banned Battlefield 4, stating that Electronic Arts has developed a game that not only threatens national security of the country, but is also a form of cultural invasion. The country's Ministry of Culture has issued a notice banning all material retailed to the game in any form, including the game itself, related downloads, demos, patches and even news reports. According to PCGames.com.cn [Chinese language], Battlefield 4 has been characterized as illegal game on the grounds that the game endangers national security and cultural aggression."
Since something like violence is so alien to Chinese culture.
It's ok China, you can ban the game just keep in mind that millions of BF 4 players are enjoying the game on Chinese manufactured equipment. Irony anyone?
Umm, since their intent is to prevent Chinese from getting ideas, and they do like the revenue from manufacturing computers for the rest of the world, and would probably prefer that other countries' youth wasted their time on games instead of studying, then...
No, that's not ironic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony
The PLA has short arms and short legs - meaning that it can't get to where it's going and once it gets there, it doesn't have the logistical tail to fight. The strength of the US Army has nothing to do with our weapons. I served with the US Army in Egypt about 10 years ago at a remote checkpoint in the middle of the Sinai desert. I watched as every day, Egyptian conscripts were given a bag of rice and vegetables as their food for the day. Their only water was from a 55 gallon oil drum which was used for cooking and bathing and the only time they got meat was when they were rotated back to their main base. Meanwhile, I'm on a FOB with satellite TV, air conditioning and more turkey sandwiches that I could possibly eat. That's when it struck me that the strength of the US Army does not come from our weapons - it comes from our ability to move more turkey sandwiches across the globe than the good guys can even move in their own country. An Army marches on its stomach. The problem with a million man army is that you have to feed it and once we cut that off, the Chinese have a million starving, trained men with guns.
You're absolutely right.
Even here in Canada, we're seeing an emergence of increased cultural aggression from the US and many American companies are trying to bring their American values to Canada. Traditionally, we're valued our social programs, healthcare and unemployment benefits as a cultural force that has helped us to provide better governance and lifestyle to the vast majority. The American (corporate) values are really starting to push the view of letting the aggressive superstar individual succeed and everyone else fail. I'm sorry if anyone is offended but today's American values tend to let the entire middle class suffer and hurt the lower class significantly. The old adage that the rich get richer and the poor stay poor has been tilted to the extreme in today's economic reality.
Don't get me wrong - I love the US. But they tend to think that democracy and capitalism are one and the same and that's not true. People don't exist to serve artificial constructs like corporations. People exist to help serve and better the human race and too often we forget this as we struggle in our daily lives. I want my children to live in a better world than the one that I grew up in and I don't see it happening today. The US concept of democracy has been perverted by corporate interests and aggressive corporate lobbying. Candidly, I think the world is a more violent, aggressive and dangerous place to live in today than it has been in the past. That being said, it's still better than anything coming out of the cultural toilet that is the Middle East, China and Russia.
Everything you said is true. There's just one thing to add:
The problem with a million man army is that you have to feed it and once we cut that off, the Chinese have a million starving, trained men with guns.
Pray that they're in your enemies territory at the time.
Russia won WW2 through their burned earth strategy, but it cost them their industrial base and contributed greatly to them losing the Cold War.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The Chinese were invaded by Western powers in the recent past, so you can see why they're touchy on the subject. They're pissed about the opium wars, and they're pissed at the exploitative and heavy-handed behaviour of the West up to the point when they left. At the summer palace near Beijing there are signs everywhere showing you what it was like before it was torched by the French and the English. They don't forget this shit. The cultures gelled less in China than they did in India. At least there was some cross-cultural understanding in India (especially early on). There was fuck all understanding in China from the get-go. Literally the first thing the English did was piss of the emperor and each side looked down upon the other.
Whilst it's not a competition and there are no "winners", culturally, violence is arguably more alien to the Chinese than it is to us Westerners. Whilst both Europeans and the Chinese have had their share of internal fighting and bloody revolutions, it's only us Westerners who have a long history of violent, expansionist, imperialism. Westerners destroyed almost all of the native culture in the Americas (in the Andes almost the entire native population was wiped out) and Australia. We've also fucked up huge swathes of Africa, the English committed plenty of atrocities in India and had no qualms about getting the Chinese hooked on opium. Our meddling in the Middle East after the first world war has left a legacy of violence and social problems. We constructed the state of Isreal, which has been nothing but violence and trouble. We've been building economies and riches using slave labour for millennia. Vast quantities of wealth poured in the UK, and other European countries, from slave plantations (a lot of it sugar).
soylentnews.org
After unification by the Qin about 200 BC the country itself has remained more less the same size. If you want to call that a "large empire" then go ahead. From my perspective it's a large country. Yes, there was violence inside China for centuries: my original post says this. But there's been at least as much inside Europe and individual European countries. In China, most people speak the same language and are happy to consider themselves Chinese. They don't feel like they're part of "an empire." The obvious poo in the pie of course is Tibet, where China undoubtedly behaved in a violent and heavy-handed manner.
My post is no attempt to justify China's "modern brutal oppression." All that I'm saying is that it's no worse than what we've done to our own people or our neighbour's people. In fact, quite a lot of the very shitty stuff we've done is in living memory. Yet we seem to pretend it didn't happen and call the kettle black (as the over-rated post I replied to is doing). That is what the Chinese think when they see statements like the post I replied to.
You what I said by distilling it down to "yes the British did some nasty things over a hundred years ago. It's quite clear my post is about much more than that.
soylentnews.org