PLA Develops First Person Shooter With US Troops as Targets 395
An anonymous reader tipped us to a People's Daily story about the (Chinese) People's Liberation Army's new shoot-em-up game with US soldiers as targets, and that story led us to a more complete description of the Glorious Revolution game at the Daily Mail, which includes a nice video (in Chinese, of course) toward the bottom of the article that shows how the game looks in action.
Not surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
There are games where China is the enemy. Why is it suddenly a bad thing when the US are the bad guys?
Not convinced... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
There are games where China is the enemy. Why is it suddenly a bad thing when the US are the bad guys?
Citation needed for games where the Chinese army is the bad guy and the game is made by a world government.
Re:Not surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Because those games are not created by the US government or US Army, nor are they used as training tools for actual soldiers.
Re:i always complain about false equivalency (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:i always complain about false equivalency (Score:2, Insightful)
but this is entertainment, not government policy
Actually, since it's being used as a training tool for the army, this does count as government policy. On the other hand, I have to admit that I have a hard time getting offended, since it looks more like Call of Duty than a useful training tool. If China really wants to equate mouse accuracy with martial readiness, who am I to persuade them otherwise?
Re:i always complain about false equivalency (Score:2, Insightful)
i always complain about false equivalency morons posting on slashdot and elsewhere. you know, the morons who say "but the u.s.a..." whenever the issue of chinese internet censorship or human rights violations comes up. even though chinese internet censorship and human rights violations are genuinely orders of magnitude worse than in the west. not that the false equivalency morons can see that. whether out of intellectual dishonesty or genuine stupidity, who knows.
Funny thing that, by conflating genuine criticism of US actions with false equivalency you join the ranks of those false equivalency morons. And all the times I've seen you do it, it sure looked like wilful intellectual dishonesty on your part. Far easier for your id to paint those you disagree with as "unable to see" than to consider that the arguments are more nuanced than you'd like.
Download? (Score:3, Insightful)
Where is the free download link?
If it's not free and FOSS, it's COMMUNISM.
Re:Not surprising (Score:2, Insightful)
Huh? Which country's government is EA Games?
Re:Not surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
and we could shitcan the Chinese economy in 24 secs announcing our intent to default on that debt, and stopping the purchase of their exports.
Re:Not surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Any attempt to seriously harm the US through economic methods would also hurt themselves.
Re:Not surprising (Score:2, Insightful)
US Government debt has fixed maturities; they can't call it in. They could stop buying new debt(*), they could sell off existing debt, but they can't demand $5 trillion in cash right now.
* The treasury department has already hit the debt limit and cannot issue any more new debt, in theory. This year, 70% of all new debt was purchased by the federal reserve ("qualitative easing 2"). Helicopter Ben Bernanke would be just as happy to purchase 100% of it because Apple added new features to the iPad without raising the price so that proves there isn't any inflation, nevermind the price of things like food or oil or gold or silver.
And it should be noted (Score:5, Insightful)
The US Army HAS created a game. It is called America's Army and is free for all to play. You play as US forces, of course. So who is the enemy OPFOR, basically the generic professional opposing force the Army itself has. Whatever side you play on always appears as US Army, the other side always appears as OPFOR. No country is the "bad guys" in their game.
The Army game doesn't make a political statement, and indeed is based off of the Army's own training idea and methods.
Re:Not surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
1: Two countries, one set of resources. Almost always, this is what wars end up being fought over.
I assume you mean the resources currently in Chinese territory. I doubt we'd go to explicit war against a major military power with nuclear capability over resources. Easier and safer to bargain, like we have up until now.
2: China's nationalism. Race is second, because Han is the only race in China that matters.
FTFY. Ask the Uyghur about that. However, the concept of the Middle Kingdom is key to its foreign policy. China invented exceptionalism [wikipedia.org] millennia before George Washington was born.
3: Revenge, especially of what Japan did to them last century.
I hope not. There's enough ancient hatred in the world as it is.
I still think the flashpoint will be when China decides it's put up with "its rebellious province" [wikipedia.org] long enough, and the US will have to decide whether it will go to war on behalf of its little ally or just let it go, along with a fair bit of US military hardware and technology.
Re:Not surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Not the point; I was responding to
China actually could shitcan the US economy in 24 hours, either using currency manipulation, calling in the debt, or even military means
If they did any of those things to the extremes that would "shitcan" the US economy we would not be buying any electronics anyway. At that point it would simply be a matter of "if I am going down, I am taking you down with me."
China can't really call in the debt. These bonds they be sold on the market or redeemed. Redeemed is pretty close to "calling in the debt" but if the instruments are not mature something less than face value would be paid. The market lacks enough buys to absorb the assets if they were dumped at anything beyond firesale prices. China would lose a huge portion of their own savings, but it would turn the dollar into paper. They can't redeem them all at once at the Treasury either as they don't have the cash on hand to pay, and can't borrow it because we are in excess of the debt ceiling already. So we would default. That would again destroy China's savings and turn the dollar in to paper. With the even greater side effect of destroying our ability to borrow. T-Bills being reduced to a JUNK rateing would be a much bigger problem for our banks and private sector than those bogus valued CDO/CDS/MBS ever were, and still remain.
The DEFLATION that would trigger would be so incredible that nobody could find a dollar spend and few would have anything of enough value to trade for one if such a dollar was found. The ONLY spending that would be happening is completely on inelastic products like staple foods.
No US money would be purchasing electronics from China through intermediaries or otherwise.
Meanwhile in China FoxCon and friends have a problem. Their biggest market has vanished overnight. The only markets large enough in population to replace it (their own domestic and India) don't have a standard of living which would permit many to buy these products. The only way to fix that overnight would be a sudden and extreme revaluation of currency which would alter the political landscape so rapidly their governments could not survive. If they don't revalue until most citizens can buy and IPad, well everything grinds to halt. Workers go home because there is no need to build more inventory, wages are not paid to workers not working, farm products don't get bought even though people are starving, the farms collapse and then everyone is starving.
So yea its essentially a non-nuclear MAD arrangement.
No they can't (Score:5, Insightful)
The people who act like that are just people who don't understand the world economy. They see it on a narrow, personal, level and think it is like a loanshark situation: China gave the US money and can call it due any time. That is wrong, what actually happened is China chose to invest in US securities and bought them. They pay defined rates at defined times and there is no ability to "call in the loan."
Also important to understand is that US securities pay in US dollars. So if the government chooses to inflate their way out of it, you are SOL. A note pays a fixed dollar amount and unless it is a TIPS or inflation protected one, and long term bonds are not, then it isn't paid in adjusted dollars. If you have a note that pays $1 million then that's what you get, doesn't matter if that $1 million has 1% of the buying power as when you purchased the note. Means there's a reason for holders of these to not want the US economy to tank.
Now what China could do it sell the securities on the open market. While the government doesn't pay the balance on a note until it is due, you can sell it to other investors. Ok, but if they unloaded all their securities at once, it would cause a massive price depression which would mean a massive loss of money for China. If they tried to unload securities with a face value totaling a trillion, but could only get people to pay ten billion because of oversupply and people being worried, they'd take a massive financial hit.
There's more to this (like the fact that default is an option for the US, or that the notes are all just accounting entries managed by the treasury, not physical notes) but what it comes down to is it is not a situation of "They loaned a lot of money and can hold it over your head." It is rather a situation of "They have invested a ton of money in your securities and need those securities to do well so they don't lose their investment."
Re:Not surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know how many games have turned killing Chinese into entertainment value? This isn't a game made by a game company. This was developed by the PLA. Did America's Army developed for the US Army attack Chinese, or really anyone? Propaganda is propaganda.
Re:Not surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally I don't care which ever side you can play in any game or how horrific a game can be, it's all just virtual reality, and as long as it stays there, I don't care.. And I like the US countryside, only sad thing is, there live so many 'not so intelligent' people there (next to a lot intelligent, but it seems those haven't got anything to say)..