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Censorship PC Games (Games) Entertainment Games

Strategy Videogame Upsets Chinese, Gets Banned 711

Posted by simoniker from the hearts-of-irony dept.
An anonymous reader writes "China's State News Agency, Xinhua reports that China's Ministry of Culture has banned a computer game for 'distorting history and damaging China's sovereignty and territorial integrity'. Paradox's PC strategy game 'Hearts of Iron', was accused of distorting historical facts in describing Manchuria, West Xinjiang, and Tibet as independent sovereign countries in the maps of the game. 'All these severely distort historical facts and violate China's gaming and Internet service regulations,' the Ministry's Game Products Censorship Committee said. 'The game should be immediately prohibited.' [via China Digital]"
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Strategy Videogame Upsets Chinese, Gets Banned More

Strategy Videogame Upsets Chinese, Gets Banned

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  • Sorry, China (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kid Zero ( 4866 ) on Saturday May 29, 2004 @12:20PM (#9285416) Homepage Journal
    no matter how much it may sting, you can't repress the truth forever. I'm sure the people whom you've stomped on won't forget the truth.

    • Re:Sorry, China (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      In many of the Romance of the Three Kingdom games by Koei (the older ones as far as I can remember), Taiwan is not part of the territory of any of the mainland warlords. Why wasn't China upset then? (Maybe I was too young.) Why now, and why over such a game?

    • Re:Sorry, China (Score:5, Insightful)

      by khallow ( 566160 ) on Saturday May 29, 2004 @12:27PM (#9285449)
      Actually, most of China was at some point not part of China. Over the millenia, that distinction no longer matters. You don't have to repress the truth forever, just long enough.

    • repressing the truth (Score:5, Insightful)

      by line.at.infinity ( 707997 ) on Saturday May 29, 2004 @12:34PM (#9285481) Homepage Journal
      That's basicallly what I've been telling to Japan, but they won't heed my warnings about Godzilla even though Sim City clearly proves their existance!

    • Re:Sorry, China (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ericspinder ( 146776 )
      Now that's one way to break into China market, I wouldn't be surprised if this game becomes a big underground hit there.

      • Re:Sorry, China (Score:5, Insightful)

        by AirLace ( 86148 ) on Saturday May 29, 2004 @02:58PM (#9286170)
        You underestimate the extent of the nationalism found in China. By and large, the Chinese people adamantly claim these territories to be part of China. They just won't accept any other interpretation.

        Point in case: Herbert Xu, a Chinaman, resigned from the Debian project [red-abstract.com] after the Taiwanese flag made it into a KDE package. Note that this package was not even one that he maintained, and that he had been part of the project for several years.

        With feelings as strong as that, it's going to take more than the latest and greatest 3D arcade game to sway people of their political convictions. After all, independent thought and rebellion can be a costly passtime in China, particularly when it turns you against your government.

        • Re:Sorry, China (Score:3, Insightful)

          by lemox ( 126382 )
          There's a little more to it than that. Originally, Taiwan had the Chinese flag and was listed as a "Republic of China", which, as it stands, is the ISO-UN nomenclature of the country. I don't know about Xu, but many of the arguments against changing the flag was that Debian was essentially breaking a standard for political reasons (i.e. the independance of Taiwan). While many non-chinese would think that was the right course of action, the fact of the matter is that other people brought politics into som

        • Re:Sorry, China (Score:4, Informative)

          by phrasebook ( 740834 ) on Saturday May 29, 2004 @11:25PM (#9288171)
          Glad Herbert Xu quit Debian - the project doesn't need someone like that.

          Look at this posting to see what his real attitude is:

          http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-boot@lists.de bi an.org/msg43619.html

          He says: "Who cares? It'd be much better if you [Taiwanese] didn't use Debian at all.". Idiot.

    • Re:Sorry, China (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MrLint ( 519792 ) on Saturday May 29, 2004 @03:58PM (#9286465) Journal
      I agree with this sentiment. However i'd like to add a caveat. We are all aware of how history is re-written and adjusted by the powers in charge, and this may well be more of that. However, on the flip side it is not in the public's best interest to have fact distorted via a public medium. (which i have no idea of what is historical fact in this dispute).

      For instance, there continue to be groups who claim the holocaust never happened. This opinion may be censored by a government, and the mere cat it is censored does not make it true.

      I suppose the moral here is caveat emptor, watch out who you are buying your truth from.

  • Maybe they just don't like the truth... (Score:4, Informative)

    by seanmcelroy ( 207852 ) on Saturday May 29, 2004 @12:21PM (#9285418) Homepage Journal
    Tibet *was* an independent sovereign nation before China took it over. Just because you don't like being known as a bully doesn't mean you aren't one.
    • "Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia." Reminiscent of 1984, no? Everything upsets the Chinese government anyway. Remember Falun Gong? Remember Tiananmen Square in 1989? This is nothing particularly new.
      • Remember Falun Gong?

        Why yes, as a matter of fact, I do. They're the ones who believe that there is literally a tiny little wheel which contains a model of the universe and which is located in their abdomen. Many Falun Gong followers have injured and/or killed themselves trying to perform exploratory surgery to see this wheel. This sort of thing is cause for concern, to be sure.

        What's more, it becomes clear upon reading any significant amount of literature relating to the group (be it for or against) t

    • Re:Maybe they just don't like the truth... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Saturday May 29, 2004 @01:27PM (#9285682) Homepage Journal
      The source of China's claim to Tibet is actually pretty bizarre. During the nomad/warrior phase of Tibet's history, they exacted as tribute, an Chinese imperial princess. Later, when Tibet was less formidable,this became a source of imperial claims by China of Tibet. This was subsequently picked up by the Communists in the modern era.

      This is just another example of how a tenuous claim gets respect just by being repeated long enough. However, as an American I'm hardly in a position to criticize China, since a lot of our property was stolen from our Indians through treaty violations.

      The real reason for Tibet to become autonomous would be that most of the people born there want independence.

      • Re:Maybe they just don't like the truth... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Saturday May 29, 2004 @02:06PM (#9285901) Homepage Journal
        History is written by the winners.

        If we let China win, then Tibet will have always been part of China as they say. And anyone who says otherwise is simply some crazy hippie talking about silly conspiracy theories.

        Of course it looks like the "conservatives" (and I use that term loosely because there is nothing conservative about this policy) are willing to ignore China's expansionism. Tibet and Taiwan are to be gobbled up to make China a happy trading partner.

        What ever happen to real conservatives who resisted communist expansionism at every step? How did we decide that Russia expanding into eastern europe was not okay. But China expanding into asia is not okay.

        I guess we lost our guts and our heads after the war protesters defeated the US during the Vietnam war.

        If China can go around taking over nations, why can't we? Brazil looks pretty promising, they are beating the US in beef and soybean exports. Their economy got turned around in the 90s and isn't fighting massive inflation anymore. Since Brazil is part of South America and the US refers to itself as America that logically means that Brazil is part of the US and not a sovereign nations. It all makes sense now.

        But first we have to expand into Canada and Mexico to get the resources necessary to take *back* Brazil.

    • Perhaps for Tibet, but... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Vthornheart ( 745224 ) on Saturday May 29, 2004 @01:36PM (#9285741)
      many of those other regions were by no means independant during World War II. Manchuria, for example, was immediately taken by Japan in WWII and became a pseudo-country known as Manchukuo, but was technically a territory of Japan.

      And Xinjiang was *CERTAINLY* not an independant nation at any time, ever. It has always been considered an "autonomous region" along with a great portion of that western side of China, but it is by no means independant. It still functions under the rules and mandates of the Chinese government(s), and has done so for the past 2200 years.

      So I believe that, although their action because of it was a bit extreme, they were at least correct in their reasoning for two of the states. The first one, Tibet, was indeed an independant soverignty until 1950, and so should not have been on that list. (of course, the propaganda surrounding the Tibetan situation with China is such that they would like people to believe otherwise)

      And as a final, humorous note... should the United States censor Risk, that divides our country into five partitions. =)

      • And Xinjiang was *CERTAINLY* not an independant nation at any time, ever. It has always been considered an "autonomous region" along with a great portion of that western side of China, but it is by no means independant. It still functions under the rules and mandates of the Chinese government(s), and has done so for the past 2200 years.

        BZZZZ!! Nonsense! Parts of Xinjiang have historically been part of the various chiense kingdoms (since I believe the Han--thus your statement of 2200 years), however yo

      • It's more complicated in the case of Tibet too.

        Tibet was first unified politically with China in the 13th century, under the Yuan dynasty, by Khublai Khan. Up through the Qing dynasty, it was much more of an semi-autonomous territory than an independent state. The 1911 Constitution which succeeded the Qing claims it as an integral part of China, and thus the Republic of China (aka 'Taiwan') claims it just as the PRC does.

    • Re:Maybe they just don't like the truth... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by rice_burners_suck ( 243660 ) on Saturday May 29, 2004 @02:05PM (#9285898)
      Tibet *was* an independent sovereign nation before China took it over. Just because you don't like being known as a bully doesn't mean you aren't one.

      Heh. Perhaps you haven't had the pleasure of reading George Orwell's 1984, in which Orwell vividly describes the state of the world in a future he feared. In 1984, the government rewrites history on a daily basis. This could be something small, like modifying what Big Brother said about an individual some months ago. Or it could be something big, like convincing the world that one country had always been their ally, while another had always been their enemy; especially when the opposite had been true the day before.

      This might seem crazy when you read it in a book, but these things happen all the time in real life, even here in the United States. For example, the ACLU, the so-called American Civil Liberties Union, is currently pursuing legal action against the County of Los Angeles because that county's seal includes a small image of a Christian cross, symbolizing the Mission that was the first settlement in the area. This is a form of rewriting history, as is the removal of Paul Revere from children's history books, to be replaced with some female who apparently did something similar, to be "politically correct." Yes, this has already been done in many schools.

      When China decides that it doesn't like certain things, it will talk about them as if they did not exist. I wouldn't be surprised if the entire education system there teaches people things that are wrong, so when the Chinese people hear something like this, they think it's the truth, and that Tibet was never owned by anybody else.

      BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.

      War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.

      • while i don't know about the case against LA county, don't be stupid and compare the ACLU to Big Brother.

        in 1984, Big Brother is the government. the ACLU is an organization comprised of people who don't want the government to trample civil liberties.

        say what you want about the goals and the methodologies of the ACLU, but that's a huge distinction.

        as for paul revere, your argument exactly supports his removal and the reinsertion of "some woman who apparently did something similar": if he didn't do what
      • If you check your history, Paul Revere wasn't very significant. The credit should have been given to William Dawes. But Longfellow thought that Paul Revere sounded better in his poem. (Or perhaps he got a good deal on some silverware, if he'd only include a plug? No evidence either way as far as I know.)

        That being so, why not replace him by someone else of a group that has historically been slighted? Makes sense to me...as long as they don't go around suppressing Longfellow.

        "On the 14th of April in '
      • the so-called American Civil Liberties Union, is currently pursuing legal action against the County of Los Angeles because that county's seal includes a small image of a Christian cross, symbolizing the Mission that was the first settlement in the area. This is a form of rewriting history

        By that same logic, inserting "under God" into the pledge of allegiance during the middle of the 20th century was also "a form of rewriting history" since it is in direct contradiction with the deist beliefs held by many

      • Re:Maybe they just don't like the truth... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by LarsWestergren ( 9033 ) on Sunday May 30, 2004 @02:36AM (#9288609) Homepage Journal
        Hi, I've read 1984 many times. I find it fascinating that you chose ACLU to illustrate the BB concept - a case where a minor organisation openly fought against something they dislike (for right or wrong) when you have a government with the aide of a lapdog media that tries to rewrite and erase history basically on a daily basis, EXACTLY as Orwell described it:

        Cleansing Time Magazine

        As paper libraries and archives give way to electronic data collections, history is becoming ever more frail. A composition instructor at the University of California at Irvine got a disturbing email from a friend who was searching Time magazine's digital archives looking for a certain article written by George Bush Senior and his Defense Secretary, Brent Scowcroft. In that article, the two men purportedly explained why they decided not to occupy Iraq in 1991. Their reason was that such an action would have exceeded the UN's mandate to remove Iraq from Kuwait , and would have destroyed the precedent of an international response to aggression. They went on to argue, in the March 2, 1998 article, had they chosen to occupy Iraq in 1991, the US would probably still be occupying a bitterly hostile land.

        The article, in today's light, seems like a clear rebuff to junior's invasion. But the article is gone. It's no longer in Time's digital archives - as if it never existed. The Irvine instructor decided to charge her students with the task of verifying the existence or nonexistence of the article. As it turned out, the article was in fact real, and was still archived by a number of subscription-accessed library research databases - but it was no longer in the Time archives. Interestingly, none of her digital-age students thought to look for the paper copy of the magazine in the library. The instructor did, finding not only the missing article, but also finding that editors changed the titles on many of the articles remaining in the Time archives.

        Time's post-facto editing is especially disturbing since it shakes the very foundation of library sciences. An archive is a collection of past works. By definition it must be left intact. Archive managers have no right to edit history. In this case, Time blew their chance to censor this story in 1998.


        To paraphrase some other cases:

        "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! THE WAR IS OVER!" "Um, actually, the soldiers on the ship printed up that banner and hung it behind us as a total surpise! We knew *nothing* about it."

        "Saddam was behind 9/11, that is why we invade!"
        "We invade because we have evidence that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and threatens the world."
        "We invade because he has the *capability* to create WMD, also, we never said anything about an imminent threat or him having WMD right now, so shut up!"
        "We invaded to remove a vicious dictator and bring democracy to Iraq! If you recall something else your memory is defective!"

        "The liberal cowards in the CIA who tries to dissuade us from going to war can be safely ignored."
        "Oh no! The CIA betrayed us, they didn't tell us how dangerous going to war would be! Everyone, look how corrupt and incompetent the CIA is!"

        And the good oldies -
        "Bush has a spotless history!"
        "Rumsfelt had NOTHING to do with supporting Saddam during the Reagan administration and absolutely did not shake his hand on that picture!"
        "We did NOT train and financially support the Taliban and Usama bin-Laden to fight the commies during the cold war, and we should ignore weeping liberals who say today that we shouldn't support brutal dictatorships because these dictatorships claim to fight terrorism! God bless America!"

        The list is basically endless....:
        http://mediastudy.com/articles/av12-11-03.html [mediastudy.com]
        http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0206-02.htm [commondreams.org]
        http://www.dunedinmethodist.org.nz/just/orwl.html [dunedinmethodist.org.nz]
      • RRrrghhhhh... please don't compare "political correctness" with Orwellianism. The paralells exist, but... no, you're wrong.

        City banners are not meant to be static. Changing banners so as to have the government not endorse the Christian religion (which is an important part of the seperation of Church and State) does not, in any way shape or form, rewrite history. We're not saying the town wasn't founded by missionaries.

        Anyway, this seal [redlandsweb.com] is more than just saying "oh, we were founded by missionaries." The po

  • "severely distort historical facts"? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Abjifyicious ( 696433 ) on Saturday May 29, 2004 @12:22PM (#9285425)
    Wow, I hope they never get their hands on Civilization...

  • Well jeez... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Cyno01 ( 573917 ) <Cyno01@hotmail.com> on Saturday May 29, 2004 @12:25PM (#9285434) Homepage
    Hope they dont see this [hasbro.com].
    • i know you were being funny, but games such as 'risk' and 'civilization 2' are not historic games (we all know that's not how it happened) ;) .

    • Re:Well jeez... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Total_Wimp ( 564548 ) on Saturday May 29, 2004 @01:35PM (#9285729)
      I was in the US Army in West Germany in '85 guarding the East German border. Some German friends brought over Risk and we played a little. They explained to us that due to sensitivity about their Nazi past, in German Risk you don't 'conquer' the world, you 'liberate' it. My friends at the time indicated that this was a matter of German law, but I don't know if that was true or not. At the time I thought it was funny, but now I don't think I'd find such a law to be very funny anymore.

      TW

  • China censors people.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mad_Rain ( 674268 ) on Saturday May 29, 2004 @12:25PM (#9285435) Journal
    ... And this surprises anyone because...?

    I admit, that this takes it to a new extreme though - what's next, censoring science fiction because the physics in the book violate the sci-fi laws that the government approved of?

    I wonder if because the game is banned, will it push it underground, and make it more popular. (In that case, start hosting torrent files, people! ;) )
    • physics in the book violate the sci-fi laws that the government approved of

      Are you referring to the fact that pi equals three? Certainly is easier to use than all of this 3.14 business.
  • ...maybe they can just lump it - after all, they're giving refuge to some of the biggest spammers in the US and pumping the garbage back to us.

    Until they learn to "play and work well with others", they can just learn to live with everyone else's fun.
  • their collective heads will explode.

  • Weak (Score:2)

    by N8F8 ( 4562 )
    A government can't get much weaker than this. Stomping out dissent is low. This is even lower.

    • Re:Weak (Score:2, Interesting)

      by linzeal ( 197905 )
      When will we see a real democracy emerge from the ruins of this wretched shell of a communist regime? Do you still think you will see 1 billion more people free in your lifetime? Will it be a bloody revolution or a revolution of roses?

  • Ancient Chinese secret... (Score:5, Funny)

    by OneFootIn ( 696599 ) on Saturday May 29, 2004 @12:35PM (#9285486)
    To really piss them off, send them a copy of Shadow Warrior.
  • If you had invaded a country, committed genocide against it's people, done all you can to stamp out their indigenous culture (one commentator put it "Imagine if the Nazis upon invading France had pulled down every church except Norte Dame, and burned and looted every museum except the Louvre. That's what China did in Tibet."), colonized it and incorported it into your own nation, I'm sure you'd want to repress all mention of it as well.

    Unfortunately, I don't have good hard figures on the death toll from China's genocide in Tibet (as opposed to the genocide committed against ethnic Chinese during the great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, estimates for which range between 30-60 million), and Rummel doesn't have an seperate index entry for Tibet in Death by Goverment. Here's a protest poster that claims 1.2 million Tibetans have died as the results of China's occupation. [yahoo.com] We probably won't know the real number until (like the Soviet Union) after China is liberated from Communism at some future date.

    • Re:Of course China wants to cover up Tibet Genocid (Score:4, Insightful)

      by garroo ( 748175 ) on Saturday May 29, 2004 @01:04PM (#9285547) Journal
      >i>"If you had invaded a country, committed genocide against it's people, done all you can to stamp out their indigenous culture ... ...colonized it and incorported it into your own nation, I'm sure you'd want to repress all mention of it as well."

      You mean like every stolen land-based "state" in the western hemisphere, such as the USA, which gave aborignals disease infested blankets, hunted and killed with efficiency, and then moved them onto reservations of mostly useless land far away from their original farming/hunting grounds?

      Hmmm sounds mighty familiar to me. Hell, the US Supreme court even ruled way back that the dispossession of Cherokee and other aboriginal nations was illegal, according to law, but the US just decided to send the army and IGNORE> their own courts/laws (ie: consititution)

      (see a description here: http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/immig/native_ american2.html).

      Nobody much wants to hear about that, do they? Nor do you hear anyone (well, except proud newfoundlanders) talk about how the Beothuks were exterminated in Canada....

      or how current government policies of "racial quantum (purity) assessment" allows the government to say who IS and ISN'T Aboriginal, thereby stripping them of their last shred of power: The right to self identify and gather as a nation. It also has the great effect of pitting "status" Indians with their 'on the dole' rights against "non-status" who often seek some of those rights, but are denied due to shrinking government handouts.

      Pretty world we live in here in the west, eh? Nope, nobody being colonized HERE. Oh, right, we just call it immigration.

      • Re:Of course China wants to cover up Tibet Genocid (Score:5, Insightful)

        by HeghmoH ( 13204 ) on Saturday May 29, 2004 @01:25PM (#9285670) Homepage Journal
        The difference, of course, is that nothing's being banned in the US because it speaks unfavorably of our past. That is not insignificant.
    • one commentator put it "Imagine if the Nazis upon invading France had pulled down every church except Norte Dame, and burned and looted every museum except the Louvre. That's what China did in Tibet."

      He forgot "forcibly sterilized", "imprisoned & tortured clergy", etc. but I guess the guy didn't have a spare half hour to extend his analogy. The Chinese gov't = teh suck. Evil, hypocritical old men. Thank god they're our allies (mostly).

  • Let's run a little test.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by MagicDude ( 727944 ) on Saturday May 29, 2004 @12:42PM (#9285498)
    If I post "CHINA SUCKS!!", how long do you think it will be before the Ministry's Game Products Censorship Committee bans slashdot as a violation of Internet service regulations??

  • Western parallels... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Henrik S. Hansen ( 775975 ) <hsh@member.fsf.org> on Saturday May 29, 2004 @12:54PM (#9285507) Homepage
    Karma to burn, but I need to vent. Let's go.

    Although this is not banning or censoring, strictly speaking, the Bush administration and the corporate media is not much better than its Chinese equivalents.

    They distorted the facts about the real reason for the Iraqi war -- the claim that there were WMD were at best speculative, and at worst plain lies.

    The US (and European - the Danish, at least) mainstream media have been very US-friendly and projected into most people the sense that somehow, the war was 'OK', even though there were no WMD, and therefore no valid reason (besides money, oil, power, and influence) to invade a sovereign nation.

    The US surely can't point fingers at China for not upholding the basic human rights. The imprisonment of many people in Guantanamo Bay with no trial, no evidence, and for basically no real reason other than show the right-wing voters (who sadly seems to be the majority of US voters) that "we're doing something about terrorism".

    As a Dane, it's just so sad to see how the Danish government is following the US lead in practically everything. "Oh, we'd sure like the Danish prisoners out of Guantanamo Bay, but if we cannot, they probably deserve to be there anyway. And we sure don't give a flying fuck about any other prisoners than the Danish."

    • Re:Western parallels... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by RickHunter ( 103108 ) on Saturday May 29, 2004 @01:08PM (#9285565)

      So because a government does something wrong, the people of the nation it governs, even those that disagree with its actions, cannot speak out against other countries doing the same thing? Even if they also speak out against their government doing it?

    • It's very fashionable... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rcs1000 ( 462363 ) * <rcs1000@@@gmail...com> on Saturday May 29, 2004 @01:24PM (#9285669)
      ...to point to the West's (undoubted) human right failures, and say "we are no better than they." Guantanemo Bay is just one example; you could add the goings on at the prison in Iraq, or the temporary "extradition" of terror suspects to regimes like Saudi Arabia, who do torturing for the US government.

      No doubt, Western governments (not even European ones ;-)) are far from perfect. And groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International point to US and European shortcomings on a regular basis.

      But to pretend this somehow means that the US is no better than Nazi Germany, Communist China, or Theologist Iran is absurd and disturbing.

      In the US, as in Europe, the people can choose "regime change" every five years, if they don't like the government. Anyone (practically) can stand for government, even former wresters and movie starts. There are a range of different political parties, and even when they do not win power, they could, and they help shape the agenda.

      Is that true of China? Or Iran?

      In the West, women generally have equal rights to men; whites to blacks; and jews to Muslims.

      In Saudi Arabia, and much of the Middle East, your rights are severely curtailed, or practically non-existent, if you fail to have the "right" charectaristics.

      Best of all: in the West we have a (basically) free press, and freedom of expression. You can say whatever you want! It can be disturbing (eulogies to paedophilia, or support of mass-murder), but it exists.

      In China, or Iran, or so many other places, saying the wrong thing lands you in jail.

      Tell me again that the US is just as bad as China. Tell me you would really rather live there. Tell me which of your rights you no longer wish to excercise. Tell me which of my rights you think I don't deserve.

  • not surprising (Score:5, Insightful)

    by btharris ( 597924 ) on Saturday May 29, 2004 @12:55PM (#9285511)
    China bans games (and other things) all the time. Command & Conquer Generals was banned for how it portrayed the Chinese. When I played c&c generals, I didn't expect the screwy accents and "propaganda center" to necessarily agree with the Chinese people, much less the Chinese government. In defense of c&c, though, after playing it I did have a greater realization of the threat terrorism could have on China due to geography. The U.S. has it much easier being isolated between two great oceans.

    Anyway, the annexation/aquisition/takeover/whatever of Tibet has been a controversy (for some) over recent years. So, it doesn't surprise me that "territorial integrity" is an excuse they cited. They can be picky about how you draw their borders.

    A more fundamental question, though, is how serious people take this. It's just a game. Who actually believes what they see in video games?

  • ++ungood (Score:5, Funny)

    by t_allardyce ( 48447 ) on Saturday May 29, 2004 @12:55PM (#9285513) Journal
    Banned is so in. If you get your game, film, book, music, t-shirt or pretty much anything you can banned then everyone will want it. Even if you cant get it banned, just get it disliked by some authority and you've got a sure winner, infact even the people who hate it will want to see what all the fuss is about! Just some recent examples:

    The Passion of the Christ (have you seen it?)
    GTA (Australia, germany, blood-patch?)
    Michael Moore films (Always winning Oscars)
    Teenage Sex (Its all about Bush!)
    CSS t-shirts (ok no-one outside slashdot cares but still)
    Nick-Berg video (No-one gave a url... 3 days later everyone had it)

    and ofcourse (see sig) the Vanunu interview by the BBC which has been smuggled out of Israel and gets aired tomorrow (like totally in your face sharon!)
  • I've always loved Paradox's games, ever since the original Europa Universalis (I was one of the first Yanqui Pigdogs (tm) to get hold of EU!) and I'm still a rabid fanboy. This is rather disturbing..

  • This is news? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by d474 ( 695126 ) on Saturday May 29, 2004 @12:58PM (#9285523)
    So the Chinese government is censoring free speech? Do you support that, or not?

    Everytime you go to Walmart, Target, and other "Made in China" clearing houses, you are supporting China, and placing another fatal blow to locally owned American small business.

  • In Good Company (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Jameth ( 664111 ) on Saturday May 29, 2004 @01:19PM (#9285630)
    Nice to see they are keeping up on their censorship of games. They're in good company, what with Wolfenstein still being illegal in Germany.
    • Basically anything that can be construed as glorifing the Nazis is banned, and that includes playing a game where you can be them. The reason for this isn't because they are trying to pretend like WWII and the Holocaust never happened, but quite the opposite. They still see this as an enormous black mark on their country and they allow nothing that makes it look anything but bad.

      An over reaction, to be sure, but an understandable one and something you can respect a little more. China is banning things that

  • China this, China that (Score:5, Insightful)

    by saihung ( 19097 ) on Saturday May 29, 2004 @01:39PM (#9285759)
    China was nearly conquered by Tibet during the Tang dynasty. The Tibetan army stopped miles from the Tang capital, signed a perpetual treaty of friendship with the Chinese, and departed. Today, that treaty is used by the Chinese government as evidence that Tibet was always a part of China. Ugh.

    To say that Mongolia, or Manchuria, or Tibet, or West Turkistan are part of modern China because they were part of the Manchu empire is loony - CHINA wasn't part of China then! It was all part of Qing - China belonged to the Manchus, not the other way around! Geez! We're seeing classic disconnection here; a foreign power makes you their bitch for several hundred years, and after you manage to kick them out, instead of saying, "Oh, that was unpleasant, let's try to not do that to anyone else," you turn around and invade your neighbors. Nice.

    Imagine, if you will, that Turkey tapped on the US's collective shoulder in Iraq and said, "Oh, thanks, we were looking for that." Imperial claims to territory don't mean jack. And if anyone says anything about 5000 years of Chinese history, my hed asplode - people have been living in what's now Switzerland for what, 10,000 years, but no one but a complete prat would talk about 10,000 years of Swiss history.

  • Other things to ban: (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Glowing Fish ( 155236 ) on Saturday May 29, 2004 @01:56PM (#9285843) Homepage

    The Book of History : describes an era when China, such as it was, was a collection of feudal states that only covered the Yellow River basin.


    The Records of the Grand Historian : describe a time when China controlled the Yellow and the Long river basins, with outposts further out but not much else. Also describes the destruction of a tyrannical empire.


    The Romance of the Three Kingdoms: China is split into three parts again, all of which together are nowhere as large as China is today.



  • Red Hat SCONIX (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Saturday May 29, 2004 @02:09PM (#9285928) Journal
    What would happen if a game had all Linux boxen named "SCONIX" instead? Slashdotters would probably push for a ban ;-)

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