Chinese Newspaper Touts Videogame Where Players 'Hunt Down Traitors' in Hong Kong (globaltimes.cn) 96
The Global Times is a daily tabloid newspaper published "under the auspices" of the Chinese Communist Party's People's Daily, according to Wikipedia.
And this week Slashdot reader Tulsa_Time noticed that this official state-run newspaper "promoted a video game where users are tasked with hunting down the 'traitors' leading Hong Kong's ongoing pro-democracy demonstrations."
Here's an excerpt from the article by China's state-run newspaper: An online game calling on players to hunt down traitors who seek to separate Hong Kong from China and fuel street violence has reportedly begun to attract players across Chinese mainland social media platforms. The game, "fight the traitors together," is set against the backdrop of the social unrest that has persisted in Hong Kong. The script asks the player to find eight secessionists hidden in the crowd participating in Hong Kong protests.
Players can knock them down with slaps or rotten eggs until they are captured. Online gamers claim the game allows them to vent their anger at the separatist behavior of secessionists during the recent Hong Kong riots. The eight traitors in the game, caricatured based on real people, include Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, Martin Lee Chu-ming and Joshua Wong Chi-fung, prominent opposition figures who have played a major role in inciting unrest in Hong Kong. There are also traitor figures in ancient China...
In the game, amid a crowd of black-clad rioters wearing yellow hats and face masks, Anson Chan Fang On-sang, another leading opposition figure, carries a bag with a U.S. flag, clutches a stack of U.S. dollars and holds a loudspeaker to incite violence in the streets.
And this week Slashdot reader Tulsa_Time noticed that this official state-run newspaper "promoted a video game where users are tasked with hunting down the 'traitors' leading Hong Kong's ongoing pro-democracy demonstrations."
Here's an excerpt from the article by China's state-run newspaper: An online game calling on players to hunt down traitors who seek to separate Hong Kong from China and fuel street violence has reportedly begun to attract players across Chinese mainland social media platforms. The game, "fight the traitors together," is set against the backdrop of the social unrest that has persisted in Hong Kong. The script asks the player to find eight secessionists hidden in the crowd participating in Hong Kong protests.
Players can knock them down with slaps or rotten eggs until they are captured. Online gamers claim the game allows them to vent their anger at the separatist behavior of secessionists during the recent Hong Kong riots. The eight traitors in the game, caricatured based on real people, include Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, Martin Lee Chu-ming and Joshua Wong Chi-fung, prominent opposition figures who have played a major role in inciting unrest in Hong Kong. There are also traitor figures in ancient China...
In the game, amid a crowd of black-clad rioters wearing yellow hats and face masks, Anson Chan Fang On-sang, another leading opposition figure, carries a bag with a U.S. flag, clutches a stack of U.S. dollars and holds a loudspeaker to incite violence in the streets.
Jinping better start worrying (Score:5, Interesting)
Letting the loose the dogs of jingoistic nationalism could easily come back to bite him if they ever come to the conclusion the CCP is the real enemy.
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Hey wait up a mo, who the fuck advertised this, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org], hunting down anti-establishment Americans in Montana and shooting them dead,dead,dead (zero arrests), those people in Montana better not wake up to who the enemy is, bwa hah hah ;D. How short seppo's memories are, all that bloody lead I suppose https://www.bbc.com/news/magaz... [bbc.com]. Make note of the age of US decision makers and how that aligns, "the timing of when petroleum companies phased out leaded petrol in individual US sta
Re:Jinping better start worrying (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Jinping better start worrying (Score:2)
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China has levels of ethnic homogeneity that most of the developed world could only hope to dream of though. Upper 90th percentile for Han Chinese
Re: Jinping better start worrying (Score:2)
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Just think if Nazi Germany had an game like that f (Score:4, Insightful)
Just think if Nazi Germany had an game like that for hunting down jews.
China is doing stuff that the Nazis did and soon we may need to put an stop to it.
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Communist China has been doing stuff like this for their entire existence, this is nothing new. And they make the Nazi's look like pikers - the Nazis only murdered around 10 million people, the Chinese starved 40 million people to death in just one incident.
This is the inevitable end game of all communist/socialist schemes, this is what you want to fight.
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between 23 and 55 million is the estimated range [wikipedia.org]. Noble intentions, but disastrous implementation.
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Re: Just think if Nazi Germany had an game like th (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Just think if Nazi Germany had an game like th (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait, the nazis were commies now?
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Again with this...
No. They weren't remotely socialist. Assuming you're not joking, the Nazi Party took the name to get votes. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is just as democratic as the Nazis were socialists. For those in the back, that's North Korea.
It sucks that the pandering ploy worked 80ish years ago, but there weren't a lot of examples of this yet. That anyone would buy this drek today shows we need civics and history to be more focused upon in schools.
Socialism isn't really a thing. One ca
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They dissized Krupps? And Thyssen? And the BASF? And IG Farben?
Wow, they sure taught us other stuff in history. Guess it is true, school is fake news.
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Because they called themselves that?
By that logic, the German Democratic Republic was democratic AND a republic.
Re: Just think if Nazi Germany had an game like t (Score:2)
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The point is that you can't tack an easy label on what's going on in China. Labeling them "Communist" isn't really going to cut it, they currently have more in common with Fascism and Corporatism than they have with Communism.
We just don't like the idea that this could be bad because, well, if we're not careful it's what's in store for us, too.
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Re: Just think if Nazi Germany had an game like th (Score:2)
Re:Just think if Nazi Germany had an game like tha (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not GP, but the definitions aren't difficult.
I'll assume the reader has a basic grasp of SOME economic concepts. Ask or Google if you need more information. The main prerequisite one needs to understand, which not every grade-school student knows, is public goods and private goods. In short, a private good is used by one person or small group at a time, such as a car. If I'm using your car to drive to work, you can't simultaneously use it to drive to work yourself. Public goods are used by "everybody" at once, so national defense would be a good example. You BENEFIT if I join you in defending the territory. A flood-control dam is another example - the dam protects the entire metropolitan area, and it works best if we build and maintain it together.
The three major economic systems differ in how they handle production and distribution of private goods. Remember these are benefits that serve one person or family at a time, such as a TV set or a kitchen table.
In communism, "the means of production (of private goods) are owned by the people", and "the people" decide how to distribute the private goods produced. This of course implies that the means of production - factories, ships, etc are financed by "the people".
"The people" decide whether to build a new Monsanto-style seed research facility, how much to spend building it, etc. Then money is taken from "the people" to build it.
If "the people" is more than about 8 persons, they don't have daily vote in how many tables to produce that day, and what to do about the fact that the wood shipment is late so they can only produce some of the items they had wanted to make. Instead, the production and distribution decisions are in practice made by leaders. These are people who managed to get themselves into positions of power, aka politicians.
So to summarize:
In Communism, politicians decide whether to build a Monsanto factory or a natural gas field, then take the people's money to build it. Then the politicians decide who gets the benefits.
In capitalism, each individual decides whether or not to fund the new factory and be an owner. You decide whether to put your money into Monsanto, Ben & Jerry's, or just buy $8 lattes every day and own a latte for a few minutes. Whomever chooses to be an owner of Tesla shares in any profit, according to their contribution.
Socialism is simply a mix of capitalism and communism. Some private goods are produced by those who choose to participate, other private goods are produced by the politicians forcing everyone to participate whether they want to or not.
Re:Just think if Nazi Germany had an game like tha (Score:4, Insightful)
In a historical sense, socialism and the various factions under it were at least united under the principles that private property should not exist. The largest difference between communism and socialism is that communists (sometimes called Marxists, but there are some groups that consider themselves communists but not Marxists) believed that it was necessary to have a revolution to seize power whereas most other socialist groups believed it was possible to achieve this transition through peaceful democratic means.
Socialism itself is almost too broad of a descriptor in much the same way that capitalism is too broad. There are all kinds of different flavors that span the gamut from the more anarchistic types that don't believe a state should exist to the model employed by most communist countries where the state runs the economy. When you view it in that context the only common feature is that neither group believes in private property. You can find the same distinctions under capitalism where you have laissez faire free market capitalists and capitalists who favor government regulations in most sectors of the economy. The only common feature is that both groups believe in private property.
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That's why I think all of the efforts by western democracies to try to fight commu
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Stalin had millions of peasant farmers labelled 'kulaks'. He ginned up violence against them to facilitate state ownership of agricultural land:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
You call that a mistake?
Re:Just think if Nazi Germany had an game like tha (Score:5, Insightful)
Communist China has been doing stuff like this for their entire existence,
Who? I only see crypto-capitalist fascist China. Where is this communist China?
This is the inevitable end game of all communist/socialist schemes, this is what you want to fight.
Ignorance is what I want to fight, since it ruins democracy. And corporatism is not democratic. We demand rights in our free time, then we give them up when we go to work.
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the Nazis only murdered around 10 million people, the Chinese starved 40 million people to death in just one incident.
To be fair, the Nazis intentionally killed 10 million people, while the ~40 million Chinese mostly died from economic incompetence.
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They did, it just wasn't a computer game:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Could backfire (Score:4, Interesting)
Pandering to the base behavior of your nation's tribal tendencies is a risky strategy. It depends entirely on the inability of your citizenry to see through the propagandized, virtual smoke screen... the Chinese people are cautious when confronting the central government, but they're not this stupid.
Re:Could backfire (Score:4, Interesting)
Pandering to the base behavior of your nation's tribal tendencies is a risky strategy. It depends entirely on the inability of your citizenry to see through the propagandized, virtual smoke screen... the Chinese people are cautious when confronting the central government, but they're not this stupid.
The whole thing is premised on the idea that people don't know how much better things are elsewhere. It's why China has the great firewall, and in NK people simply don't have internet at all. During the Cold War people in the USSR mostly had no idea that life in the west was objectively better, in fact were fed a steady diet of propaganda about how it was far worse.
In all those cases though, you can be sure that people still hear rumors that question the official narrative, and it would certainly be wrong to discount the power of rumors.
Re:Could backfire (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't downplay nationalism over common sense.
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Chinese are traveling in record numbers to the West.
Yeah, the ones who have been approved to travel. Once they prove that they're good little androids, they can get a permit.
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Yeah, the ones who have been approved to travel. Once they prove that they're good little androids, they can get a permit.
Chinese do not need special permission or approval to travel internationally.
If they are going to a country that requires a visa, once that visa is approved, they just buy a ticket and go.
For countries that require no visa for Chinese visitors or that issue visas on arrival, there are no restrictions on immediate travel.
More Chinese travel internationally than any other country.
If you believe the Chinese are ignorant of the world outside China, you are mistaken.
Re:Could backfire (Score:5, Informative)
Chinese do not need special permission or approval to travel internationally.
lol ok [theguardian.com]
Those are just the people they admit to banning from travel. Your social credit score is checked before you can even buy an airline ticket. You're not getting out of China unless they want you to go.
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That has nothing to do with everyday people needing special approval for travel.
The whole point is that it's not special. Nobody gets an airline ticket at all without a social credit score check.
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The whole thing is premised on the idea that people don't know how much better things are elsewhere. It's why China has the great firewall, and in NK people simply don't have internet at all. During the Cold War people in the USSR mostly had no idea that life in the west was objectively better, in fact were fed a steady diet of propaganda about how it was far worse.
In all those cases though, you can be sure that people still hear rumors that question the official narrative, and it would certainly be wrong to discount the power of rumors.
Given the popularity of South Korean entertainment media (k-pop, movies) in North Korea, I would say a decent amount of North Koreans know life there sucks compared to the outside world. They just can't do anything about it. Piss off the government and you and your entire family are sent away to a reeducation camp where, if you're lucky, you just get worked to death while your wife or daughter could be raped at any time and any/all of you could be killed at any moment. The North Korean government is very
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Re:Could backfire (Score:5, Insightful)
the Chinese people are cautious when confronting the central government, but they're not this stupid.
It's not about intelligence, it's about information, and the Chinese are this ignorant. And guess what? Americans are close behind, or perhaps tied with them, and we don't even have a great firewall to use as an excuse.
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Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Would be a fairly easy game (Score:2)
More fun games from the Political Office: (Score:4, Interesting)
Tiananmen Tank Driver - YOU can run over Tank Man.
Buddha Buster - YOU can beat up the Dalai Lama.
Formosa Fury - YOU can liberate the people of Taiwan.
Uyghur Breaker - YOU can re-educate a Uyghurs Muslim.
Meh. (Score:5, Interesting)
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So I will say that based on everything I know, I disagree with China's handling of the Hong Kong situation and I support the Hong Kong Protesters.
I will agree with you however that as a culture the US can't really claim the unambiguous moral high ground when it comes to propaganda in games and other entertainment.
State Sponsored? America's Army game series.
Probably not State Sponsored but still has value as reinforcing the currently accepted narrative? At least most of the Call of Duty games, the first Cr
Re:Meh. (Score:5, Insightful)
They look like Nuremberg rallies.
If you're making a movie, the US military would also be interested in helping to finance your work, as long as you're OK with a bit of script editing.
Anything China does, the US does too.
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You're deriding American militarism because it reminds you of Nazi militarism. But American militarism was essential to *stopping* the Nazis. It was American *pacifists* who worked to the Nazis' advantage, and in some cases made common cause with them.
If the lesson you draw from WWII is "militarism bad", you're setting the stage for a similar WWIII.
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You're deriding American militarism because it reminds you of Nazi militarism. But American militarism was essential to *stopping* the Nazis. It was American *pacifists* who worked to the Nazis' advantage, and in some cases made common cause with them.
If the lesson you draw from WWII is "militarism bad", you're setting the stage for a similar WWIII.
The lesson from WWII is that nationalism and "* uber alles" is bad. That's why I get concerned every time I see some redneck riding around with a US flag hanging out the back of their pickup, or the forced/exaggerated reverence for all things military in the US. When you see yourself as superior to everything else, you're going to start acting in ways to enforce that belief. Massive/constant displays of patriotism or nationalism are things you expect to see in authoritarian states such as China, DPRK, or
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I get concerned particularly when there is such strong/blind nationalism over other nations in a time of peace. In times of more dire need (WWII, the aftermath of the September 11th) a bit of over the top nationalism is better than weakness. A healthy skepticism at other times has been healthy (e.g. Vietnam).
The aftermath of 9/11 driving multilateral action in Afghanistan made sense, extending that same blind nationalism to have Iraq War II in a unilateral fashion was problematic.
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I get concerned particularly when there is such strong/blind nationalism over other nations in a time of peace. In times of more dire need (WWII, the aftermath of the September 11th) a bit of over the top nationalism is better than weakness. A healthy skepticism at other times has been healthy (e.g. Vietnam).
The aftermath of 9/11 driving multilateral action in Afghanistan made sense, extending that same blind nationalism to have Iraq War II in a unilateral fashion was problematic.
That's a good point and I can agree with that. I would argue that we are not in a time of dire need, and that a lot of the current displays in the US are nothing more than the right-wing version of virtue signalling.
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To the extent we can hold on to our nuanced and skeptical view of things even in times of relatively dire circumstances without becoming less effective, that would be good as well.
For example there is little fault I can find with the strategy with respect to Germany and ethnic Germans in WWII. However the US treatment of Japan (dropping nukes on civilian cities) and ethnic Japanese (camps) during the war is worthy of criticism. Interestingly enough American treatment of post-WWII Russia and particularly C
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I think a better defense would be at least in the US, one could feel free to produce the converse material. Want to release a game that panders to someone playing as a soldier fighting for the Confederacy against the US? That can and has happened. Imagine a game set in an alternate 1950s as a soldier defending Tibet from Chinese invasion? Would not fly in China.
But on your argument, there is balance to be had between having the will and support to stand strong using military action (e.g. World War II) a
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I completely agree. If criticism of militarism were to be suppressed in the US, and especially if it were suppressed as much as it was in Germany pre-WWII, I would be extremely concerned. American militarism has been such a force for good because it is subject to criticism, to reign in its excesses.
The US is a country where it's possible to wave the Nazi flag and to burn the American one. I may not agree with those who do so, but the fact that they have the right to do so is very important.
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It was American *pacifists* who worked to the Nazis' advantage, and in some cases made common cause with them.
No it wasn't. It was American business interests, and people like Charles Lindbergh who supported the Nazis. Unless you are talking about the America First Committee, who pretended to be pacifists, but were in fact anti semitic fascists.
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The America First Committee were pacifists who campaigned against US involvement in WWII. They were supported by prominent Americans, including Charles Lindbergh, who blamed the pro-war movement on the British, Jews, and capitalists, among others.
The National Union for Social Justice were another pacifist anti-war organization. They also campaigned for the nationalization of major industries and social "equality", their policies aligning neatly with those of the Nazis, and heavily criticized capitalists a
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The National Union for Social Justice were another pacifist anti-war organization.
No they weren't, they were what we now call an astro-turf organisation.
Their goal was to propose a populist alternative to the New Deal reforms made by Roosevelt, as well as to help draw democratic voters away from Roosevelt so a Republican could be voted into office.
(From the Wikipedia article).
American Fascists did not want to go to war with Hitler, which should come as no surprise. I wonder how they felt when Hitler declared war following Pearl Harbor?
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This reminds me of America's Army. Despite always being free, it's not that popular.
I played it a couple times and it wasn't bad, just kind of clunky. I did enjoy the hardcore nature of it, but that also made for a steep learning curve.
Re:Meh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Given how blatant and popular 'kill the enemies of America' games are in the US, kinda hard to get worked up over this.
This is an ongoing social and diplomatic conflict.
We both know this game does not, and cannot let players play both sides in this, or it wouldn't be allowed to exist in China. Even if it was a throwing pies at party members simulator. It would be in extremely bad taste to make an explicit U.S. versus Iran war sim, or generally make a game of something our soldiers actually lived through in recent history, but we have every right.
That is more important than the fact similar games exist elsewhere. Of course they do, and we are playing as Germans, Russians, Japanese, Italians, and even IED toting middle easterners from who knows where, and sometimes marching through a D.C. wasteland in games like The Division.
The combination of bad taste, and in China you cannot legally do it the other way around, and almost hilariously on point - the HK protestors are fighting not to be put in that same position - is what you should get worked up over. The only thing to compare this to would be releasing a hypothetical Blue Lives Mater sim that lets you beat up Black Live Matters protestors, during the Ferguson protests, in a hypothetical communist dictatorship that would threaten your livelihood if you allowed players to play the other or even both sides. Bad taste, bad situation, just bad, and I feel bad for having to explain this to anyone.
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WHUTABOUT them evul 'mericunts!
Nice troll job asshole...
Private industry, not gov't (Score:1)
As far as I know, those are all from private companies, not from the US gov't.
Tiannenmen square (Score:2)
They did a LARP version of this a while back with university students. It got a little out of hand...
I imagine the PRC govt would be pretty upset (Score:4, Interesting)
if some HK coders built a game involving shooting at PRC troops attacking HK demonstrators.
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Mainland China & HK are two different places (Score:2)
Why do we still support them? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just stop buying anything "Made in China" already.
It is long overdue.
Encouraging mob violence (Score:2)
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:1)