EPTStarcraft II: Censorship, Communism, China - Page 5
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Assariel
Germany8 Posts
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emucxg
Finland4559 Posts
On July 24 2009 05:27 Zato-1 wrote: It's not worth bending over for, though. Sure, Blizzard would prefer it if China would accept their games so they could all be one happy family- however, consider the following: 1. Revenues are not bottom-line. Profits are bottom-line. The cheaper you sell a product, the lower your profits will be as a proportion of the revenues, assuming fixed costs- in other words, I'm expecting China to represent significantly less than 7% of Blizzard's profits. 2. China is dicking around with Blizzard. The ethical thing to do is to stand your ground and not take the abuse; the other way of doing things is to bend over and take it, offer more bribes and ask them to be gentle. Truth be told, I only wish Blizzard tried to rally the gaming industry to boycott China until their government starts behaving like grown-ups (no offense to the Chinese community). Giving in only means encouraging the shadiness and corruption in this whole process, and that hurts everyone in the long term (other than the corrupt officials involved). boycott China? lol cmoo... China doesnt care | ||
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Zato-1
Chile4253 Posts
Thing is, China isn't one huge, omniscient entity. The relevant entity in this argument is the chinese government- the Chinese Communist Party. Not everyone in the communist party is corrupt. It's just in human nature that some people will simply want the satisfaction of a job well done and helping out, while others will want to take advantage of their station. If you raise a racket by boycotting them, maybe you'll attract the attention of some of the more decent officials who will try to set things straight. Maybe not. At any rate, I'm really not a fan of bending over and taking the abuse, especially in the case of a company like Blizzard which can afford not to do so. | ||
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baubo
China3370 Posts
On July 24 2009 03:29 Kage wrote: Amazing read. How do Fixed. And I can vouch for this because I am one living in China and get annoyed with this. But none of my Chinese friends really give a damn. In China people watch Youku, not Youtube. They read Baidu-Baike, not Wikipedia. They use QQ, not MSN. There is more or less a Chinese equivalent of everything the OP mentioned. It only sounds bad because most people who only browse English websites feel the internet only exist in English. Is Chinese firewall and censorship constraining? Yes. Is it detrimental? No. It's like video game/TV censorship in the US following Colombine and stuff. No player/viewer think they're good. But it's not like anyone wants to overthrow the US government because of it either. | ||
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citi.zen
2509 Posts
On July 24 2009 05:56 emucxg wrote: boycott China? lol cmoo... China doesnt care Of course not, they are comfortable playing hard ball these days. I am repeating myself, but the Rio Tinto story is too good: + Show Spoiler + Rio Tinto is a global mining conglomerate. China needs lots of iron ore for its industry, so it has to deal with them. * Early 2009, China tries to buy a large stake in Rio Tinto ($20bn investment through Aluminium Corp.). Negotiations fall through however, after politicians in Australia/UK decide they don't want a Chinese company controlling Rio Tinto. China is understandably pissed off: aren't our money just as good as someone elses'? What gives? * June/July 2009, China wants to at least renegotiate ore prices downwards, entering talks with Rio Tinto. Negotiations fail to get to the price reduction China wanted. * July 2009, Chinese govt. arrests Riot Tinto execs for "espionage". Arresting employees when negotiations fail >>> copyright infringements I think. | ||
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Trezeguet
United States2656 Posts
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cloyce
Italy8 Posts
According to chinese media, after the negotiation failed, chinese steel majors suspected that Rio Tinto may have illegally access to the information about how much iron reserves the majors have, so they conducted researches and found out that some official sold informations to Rio Tinto. Medias have condemned both corrupt official (unpatriotic) and Rio Tinto manners. @ Trezeguet23 I lived in China, I found it too much uncontrolled instead. In China you can legally watch movies in streaming and direct download all the mp3 you want. You don't even have to use eMule P2P or torrent. It's de facto legal. As far as they are chinese content it's not a problem, since a lot of them are made with taxpayer money, so they must be free; but western majors are usually angry because of this. | ||
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Mikilatov
United States3897 Posts
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Shizuru~
Malaysia1676 Posts
My flat mates were Chinese from mainland china and they told me stories about how the chinese governments censores shit tonnes of foreign stuff coming into the China. Like how they stopped the cinemas from putting up Kungfu Pandas, given the excuse that the movie kinda made fun of pandas... which is like a major WTF lol. Then again, lets look at it from this perspective, the chinese are trying to develop their own brands and the entertainment sector to reduce imports and reliance on foreign countries, lets face it they are way behind in terms of technology and development, they need to do something to catch up on the western countries, to encourage growth and development of the local entertainment industry, its only natural that their government is trying their best to not let foreign products to stomp all over the local movies and games industry before the they even had a stable footings on their businesses. which explained most of the example given by some of the posters, stuff like youku instead of youtube. anyways back on topics: Its a shame that Blizzard has to go through so much shit just to get their products to the Chinese community, then again, 7% of profits is absolutely nothing to be shunned at. its unlikely that Blizzard would just say a big FUCK YOU to the chinese and walk away. | ||
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Zato-1
Chile4253 Posts
On July 24 2009 07:59 Shizuru~ wrote: believe it or not China has changed dramatically over the last few decades, communists is nothing more than a title for the chinese now, in fact alot of modern businessman/economists would argue that the USA is becoming more socialistic/communists than China itself I stopped reading here. Anyone who thinks that has no freaking clue about how China works. Do yourself a favor and do a little research on state-owned companies in China. | ||
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emucxg
Finland4559 Posts
source: http://www.wfbrood.com/xingji/xjnews/xingji_40031.html | ||
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Athos
United States2484 Posts
I'm an American, but even I know about video sites like Youku. Youku is a great place to watch pirated Western media for free, even in developed western countries. No other website I've found can retain pirated content for nearly as long as them. | ||
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Zato-1
Chile4253 Posts
On July 24 2009 09:10 Athos wrote: Thanks for this article as well as this discussion. Intelligent posters like you guys are the reason I love Teamliquid. I'm an American, but even I know about video sites like Youku. Youku is a great place to watch pirated Western media for free, even in developed western countries. No other website I've found can retain pirated content for nearly as long as them. The level of discussion in TL is pretty high for internet standards, yeah. First website on Starcraft I stumbled upon was SC2GG.com (looking for info on SC2, lol)... and after coming to TL, I never went back. To their forums at any rate, there are still some very good articles written every now and then by their frequent writers like BachHo. TL is pretty awesome. As for US v. China: The US is a pretty amazing mixture of a developed country and a dynamic country. As GDP per capita in a country grows, so does government size as a proportion of GDP, usually (if you only consider democratic, capitalist countries). As the state grows, the country makes a tradeoff, gaining nice, politically-correct perks (better health coverage, better social security for instace) and in turn gives up economic competitiveness (bigger government means more red tape, higher taxes and could provide a disincentive to hard work- after all, the worst that can happen isn't so bad if you have a comfortable safety net). As a developed country, the US is pretty remarkable in that it's still a 'land of opportunity', where bad businesses go bust and new businesses are created all the time. This is very healthy- if you look at a list of the biggest 20 businesses in the US (by market capitalisation), you'll see plenty which are relatively new, or made that list recently. This is good- creative destruction is how economists call it- reallocating resources (read, jobs and capital) to put them to a more efficient use. Sure, the US has its problems- some of them are pretty huge, in fact. Health care is expensive and bad, education quality has fallen a lot in the last few decades, the theory of evolution is openly questioned and there's plenty of people living with obesity. I'm also a big fan of oriental culture and growth. But hearing someone say that the US is more of a socialist country China, in which you still can't criticize your political leaders is... jarring. | ||
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konadora
Singapore66363 Posts
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eScaper-tsunami
Canada313 Posts
PS: in china right now and oh facebook blockage pisses me off! | ||
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leetchaos
United States395 Posts
On July 24 2009 01:16 Carnivorous Sheep wrote: I don't see how communism fits into any of this. Whenever news like this about China pops up, you get a million people saying "god I hate communism," when it's obvious they have no real grasp on what communism is and how it fits in to this. (protip, it really doesn't) China has strayed so far from communism without going into a system like the western world that it really is its own unique system. It's not democratic, anyone can tell you that, but it is also nothing like communism as outlined by Marx, nor like the state of the USSR. So communism isn't causing the censorship of SCII in China, it's the really weird and mostly retarded system that China has of dealing with foreign stuff that is. +1 | ||
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arrrrmatey
11 Posts
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Emlary
China3334 Posts
On July 24 2009 04:37 VictorW wrote: Yes, I'm going to have to agree with baubo here. It makes no sense for the Chinese middle class to make 3 times what the median household income in the US is. I suppose there's different ways to define middle class. If Emlary means an American middle class in the sense of being able to own a car and house, then I wouldn't be surprised if it was as much as $140k a year since those are luxury goods in China. The Chinese middle class should either be defined by average or median income or something along the lines of enough financial stability to own an apartment and provide food for your family. Read some definitions of Middle Class through Wiki (Baidu-Baike is nowhere near Wiki in term of article quality, source of quote and damn censorship.) National statictics bureau said RMB60K to RMB500K ($9,000 to $75,000) of annual household income were midle classes in China back in 2005, but lots domestic media didn't agree with it. I may take this too far by saying making one million RMB a year is middle classes in China. Does having an apartment and a car sound more reasonable to describe middle classes? If so, buying an 100 squaremeter aparment in the first tier cities in China (Shanghai, Beijing, etc.) is about RBM1.5 million to RMB2 million. The price is lower as you go to lower tier cities. Having a non-BMW car is like RMB100K to RMB200K. I don't think one can afford these by making less than RMB100K a year. Actually most young Chinese who need a house to get married can't even afford the down payment. Usually their parents pay down payments, they pay monthly mortgage loan. Btw, talking about the thoughts of majority on censorship, yes, elder generation like my parents, they have a happy life and they don't even know YouTube, Facebook, etc. They don't have to know actually. Their demands are satisfied and they don't care who did Urumqi Riot, or WoW content update was delayed for years in China, or the upcoming disaster movie 2012 won't be available in Chinese theaters because it contains fictional scene some China terra would be destroyed (oh shit! definitely disharmony). But this doesn't work out with my generation. And it's getting worse. | ||
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SwEEt[TearS]
Canada1575 Posts
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saritenite
Singapore1680 Posts
Imagine your country was China. Put 1 and 1 together. ?????? Degenerate into NerdRage. China is a very collectivist country. Individuals and their rights are not as respected as the nation's interest. In China, the nation is your life, family is your life, you serve. I hurt. For all the gamers in that country. I hurt. | ||
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