How does the World view China these days?

[auxien]

i mean i'm not for state-sanctioned nannying like that video game rule but i almost agree with the sentiment in general....games in general are great, especially for young minds but overdoing anything like bingeing hardcore on something that can be a touch mind-numbing (like some vidya games) for hours and hours each day for years and years is probably not good for most people? especially children/teens? 

[zlemflolia]

49 minutes ago, auxien said:

i mean i'm not for state-sanctioned nannying like that video game rule but i almost agree with the sentiment in general....games in general are great, especially for young minds but overdoing anything like bingeing hardcore on something that can be a touch mind-numbing (like some vidya games) for hours and hours each day for years and years is probably not good for most people? especially children/teens? 

some people use video games as a social coping mechanism. lots of video games are casual and social.  i know i "played" video games for many hours a day because i was just sitting in the lobby chat room talking to my friends while i did my home work.  i'm sure there are millions of similar people

[Squee]

8 hours ago, auxien said:

i mean i'm not for state-sanctioned nannying like that video game rule but i almost agree with the sentiment in general....games in general are great, especially for young minds but overdoing anything like bingeing hardcore on something that can be a touch mind-numbing (like some vidya games) for hours and hours each day for years and years is probably not good for most people? especially children/teens? 

Wouldn't that be where the parents come into play instead of the state?

[Limo]

1 hour ago, Squee said:

Wouldn't that be where the parents come into play instead of the state?

The state is more powerful than parents, though, so probably better equipped to tackle behemoth companies that target children.

Not saying I agree with this policy, but I could see how this would be the reasoning. This seems to be a more draconian version of the rules in EU countries that prohibit (or at least limit) advertising aimed at children.

 

EDIT: which is probably a fair summary of everything China does:

- Bigger

- More people are involved

- More draconian

Edited August 31, 2021 by rhmilo
Insight was gained

[Squee]

11 minutes ago, rhmilo said:

The state is more powerful than parents, though, so probably better equipped to tackle behemoth companies that target children.

Yeah yeah, I know, haha, but I was thinking of more civil places than China.

[auxien]

3 hours ago, Squee said:

Wouldn't that be where the parents come into play instead of the state?

obviously yeah, of course.

and also the game companies themselves could maybe implement some measures, or at the least promote a culture around their games that encourages healthy use (which they may already do in some cases). 

11 hours ago, ilqx hermolia xpli said:

some people use video games as a social coping mechanism. lots of video games are casual and social.  i know i "played" video games for many hours a day because i was just sitting in the lobby chat room talking to my friends while i did my home work.  i'm sure there are millions of similar people

yeah, and the online-focused shift in social interaction over the last few decades is in general a bad thing, whether or not it’s tied to games. there are certainly many good aspects (WATMM itself being a nearly perfect utopian society!!1!1!!!) to online social interaction as a component of a healthy society, but things have swung too far in that direction over the last 10-15 years it seems. 

video gaming culture is only one aspect of this and is not inherently bad at all. the larger issues it contributes to/has created (however innocently done by the creators) are bad for most individuals and i think we’ll see the cascading effects for society as a whole over the next decades.

 

anyway, China.

[Squee]

[Limo]

2 hours ago, auxien said:

video gaming culture is only one aspect of this and is not inherently bad at al

Video gaming culture as a bunch of nerds building fun things for using computers as toys is not inherently bad at all.

Video gaming culture as a bunch of multi billion dollar companies leveraging addiction science to milk their customers for all they're worth very much is.

EU countries mitigate the effects of this by, for example, prohibiting loot boxes. It's not much, but it's a start. China probably thinks they're pussies for not doing any more, but would probably be wise to read up on the effects of prohibition. That never seems to work to truly stamp out something - quite the opposite. What do they think is going to happen once people turn 18 and can start playing games unfettered?

 

Edited August 31, 2021 by rhmilo

[Scaramouche]

50 minutes ago, rhmilo said:

What do they think is going to happen once people turn 18 and can start playing games unfettered?

That gamers will be worried about being scored poorly on the social credit system, and won't be able to afford any new 'puter games...

[usagi]

China is asshoew

 

[chenGOD]

18 hours ago, Squee said:

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-rolls-out-new-rules-minors-online-gaming-xinhua-2021-08-30/
 

The video game thing is dumb of course, because there are numerous loopholes to exploit, and prohibition doesn't work.

The interesting aspect about it is really in the power hierarchy it exposes: the original release was done through the National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA), and not the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), which is the Ministry responsible for regulating the internet. Why is this interesting? Because the NPPA (which is responsible for granting licenses to online games) falls under the Central Propaganda Department. State control over online gaming as a means to promote CCP propaganda is an interesting tactic indeed.

It's also going to lead to more invasion of privacy by corporations for the state, such as the Tencent use of facial recognition, or their logging of play time in games like League of Legends.

[Limo]

5 hours ago, usagi said:

China is asshoew

 

Hong Kong protestor is dumb ass.

 

Honestly, what do those protestors think they’ll accomplish?

[Limo]

2 hours ago, chenGOD said:

The video game thing is dumb of course, because there are numerous loopholes to exploit, and prohibition doesn't work.

The interesting aspect about it is really in the power hierarchy it exposes: the original release was done through the National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA), and not the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), which is the Ministry responsible for regulating the internet. Why is this interesting? Because the NPPA (which is responsible for granting licenses to online games) falls under the Central Propaganda Department. State control over online gaming as a means to promote CCP propaganda is an interesting tactic indeed.

It's also going to lead to more invasion of privacy by corporations for the state, such as the Tencent use of facial recognition, or their logging of play time in games like League of Legends.

I can also imagine the ministry of information technology not being big on curtailing information  technology companies.

Anyway, really interesting to see how all this clamping down on tech will unfold.

Probably best to do it from afar.

[zlemflolia]

3 minutes ago, rhmilo said:

I can also imagine the ministry of information technology not being big on curtailing information  technology companies.

Anyway, really interesting to see how all this clamping down on tech will unfold.

Probably best to do it from afar.

I hear this framing as "clamping down on tech" a lot and I don't like it.  What they're clamping down isn't "tech", I wouldn't call it tech, it's much more specific than that

[chenGOD]

18 hours ago, rhmilo said:

I can also imagine the ministry of information technology not being big on curtailing information  technology companies.

They (MIIT) may not be, but the NPPA doesn't care. The power hierarchy is pretty blatant here.

I'm trying to imagine a government agency here in Canada overstepping its bounds with respect to another agency's mandate. Would not go down well.

[thefxbip]

I personally hate videogames but this isnt about videogames or the welfare of the youth. I don't understand the comments talking about this in any other way than being a crackdown on freedom and an attempt to further control the mind and lives of the chinese citizens.

This is about, yet again, going one step towards the absolute power of Xi and total submission to CCP. Playing videogames and being in a popstar fanclub is too much of an individual self-expression.

It means there is something more important to you than the Party/Leader/Nation. They don't like that. They want absolute obedience and service.

In a dictatorship you cannot exist as an individual. Self-expression is forbidden. Critical thinking is forbidden. Creativity is forbidden. No freedom is allowed, no matter how small it is, because such freedom threatens the goal for absolute grip over the lives and mind of the individual. You can't let any freedom slip in, because it is a threat to the whole system. It is a threat to the whole brainwashing education, authoritarian machine and mindless servitude.

Simply because human being naturally love freedom, and if you give them a taste of it they will not forget and they will not want to be controlled afterwards. The goal is to never let them taste it so they will never question anything. As long as you never tasted true freedom you will comply because you don't know anything better exists.

It is why tyrants want to extinguish self-expression in every possible way they can. No freedom is too small.

A poem is a tyrant worst enemy because it awakes the spirit of self-expression, human dignity, compassion and freedom in a human being. If this happens, ones cannot live in servitude and oppression anymore, like a mindless machine in service to authority, and one will not blindly obey orders that violates other human beings freedom and human rights because one has developed a conscience.

What tyrants wants in the end are human beings without a conscience, obedient, mindless, numb and afraid.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/06/opinion/why-authoritarians-attack-the-arts.html

[auxien]

7 hours ago, thefxbip said:

I personally hate videogames but this isnt about videogames or the welfare of the youth. I don't understand the comments talking about this in any other way than being a crackdown on freedom and an attempt to further control the mind and lives of the chinese citizens.

idk what there is to understand about me or anyone taking a subject slightly off topic when it comes up. this is a forum for discussion. general bantering, in fact.

but anyway to me there's not much 'discussion' there just repeating the same thing over and over: China controls/tries to control their citizens to sometimes dangerous amounts, this is pretty obvious and common and in every way it's unsurprising. just repeating that same rant every time a piece of news exemplifying it came out would be....very boring.

[thefxbip]

12 hours ago, auxien said:

idk what there is to understand about me or anyone taking a subject slightly off topic when it comes up. this is a forum for discussion. general bantering, in fact.

but anyway to me there's not much 'discussion' there just repeating the same thing over and over: China controls/tries to control their citizens to sometimes dangerous amounts, this is pretty obvious and common and in every way it's unsurprising. just repeating that same rant every time a piece of news exemplifying it came out would be....very boring.

Fair enough but the danger is to make it look like the CCP isnt that unreasonable. Like it is almost a good idea. Like it is only slightly exaggerating. They sure would like to convince people of that.

It definitively isnt the case. There is an acceleration of the power strikes against culture going on right now.

If you want off topic tho i think ancient and traditional chinese painting is marvellous.

Superb landscapes. Very important works were made in China, key to lots of very important art movements and work of art in other countries. Went on to influence Japanese art. Japanese art went on to influence things like impressionists and Van Gogh. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_painting

Edited September 2, 2021 by thefxbip

[thefxbip]

Would be great if governments paranoid about their culture and country would ACTUALLY care about culture? hahaha

Instead of just being about propaganda and nationalistic dogma, you know, you could actually help culture grow. It's something ive noticed. 

There is such a contradiction in all very nationalistic states in the fact they say they care about their culture so very much while at the same time they strangle creativity in any way they can and by doing that, make their own cultural landscape suffocate.

Ultra-Nationalism pose itself as cultural preservation but i think that it is more alike to cultural self-destruction.

Edited September 2, 2021 by thefxbip

[Rubin Farr]

The party seems to want to roll things back to the 80s, before the internet showed their citizens what was beyond China. Trying to disassemble the human phenomenon of celebrity seems futile, and reinforcing machismo will only go so far among some people.

[chenGOD]

5 hours ago, thefxbip said:

cultural self-destruction

Like a cultural revolution?

[thefxbip]

Killing some of your country best artists and scientists.

Always a top shelf idea. May as well start your revolution with a spicy handicap.

[zlemflolia]

they were previously uneducated and heavily oppressed peasants and workers. even the cpc disapproves nowadays. and calling a ban on video games, which is really just putting video games into the hands of parents (whether they want to give an account in their name) a cultural revolution is a bit hilarious

Edited September 2, 2021 by ilqx hermolia xpli

[chenGOD]

10 hours ago, ilqx hermolia xpli said:

they were previously uneducated and heavily oppressed peasants and workers. even the cpc disapproves nowadays. and calling a ban on video games, which is really just putting video games into the hands of parents (whether they want to give an account in their name) a cultural revolution is a bit hilarious

Context was:

"Ultra-Nationalism pose itself as cultural preservation but i think that it is more alike to cultural self-destruction."

But while banning playtime for video games is obviously not a cultural revolution, there are certain elements of Xi's policies that hearken back to the Cultural Revolution. Like banning English education in Shanghai, the introduction of Xi Jinping thought as a mandatory subject, the purging of high-ranking members of society and the party to bring "capitalism" back in line etc. Under Xi, there has been a crackdown on academia as well (just the like the good old days).

With respect to video games, the aforementioned agency, the NPPA, is is China’s primary regulator of its online game industry, and part of its mandate is to block the publication of any game that is vulgar, low brow, kitsch or otherwise in violation of “core socialist values” (note that what constitutes a violation of core socialist values is not clearly laid out, leaving plenty of room to block games for whatever reason). This is just part of Xi's longstanding war on culture (and in this speech from 2014, he discusses the need for patriotic art and the need for greater control of new art forms) and is very reminiscent of what happened to the arts and culture in the actual cultural revolution.

As well, while Deng Xiaoping and Hu Jintao had no problems criticizing the Cultural Revolution, Xi has been reluctant to do so. He recently did criticize it in a very oblique fashion, but Xi is obviously reluctant to "throw shade" on Mao, as he wants to compare himself favourably to Mao (who is very popular among Chinese youth). So all that to say, while a ban on young people playing video games in and of itself is certainly not a neo-cultural revolution, when taken in the broader context, it is one part of a slow burning trend to reimagine China domestically in service of the Party.

[zlemflolia]

39 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

Context was:

"Ultra-Nationalism pose itself as cultural preservation but i think that it is more alike to cultural self-destruction."

But while banning playtime for video games is obviously not a cultural revolution, there are certain elements of Xi's policies that hearken back to the Cultural Revolution. Like banning English education in Shanghai, the introduction of Xi Jinping thought as a mandatory subject, the purging of high-ranking members of society and the party to bring "capitalism" back in line etc. Under Xi, there has been a crackdown on academia as well (just the like the good old days).

With respect to video games, the aforementioned agency, the NPPA, is is China’s primary regulator of its online game industry, and part of its mandate is to block the publication of any game that is vulgar, low brow, kitsch or otherwise in violation of “core socialist values” (note that what constitutes a violation of core socialist values is not clearly laid out, leaving plenty of room to block games for whatever reason). This is just part of Xi's longstanding war on culture (and in this speech from 2014, he discusses the need for patriotic art and the need for greater control of new art forms) and is very reminiscent of what happened to the arts and culture in the actual cultural revolution.

As well, while Deng Xiaoping and Hu Jintao had no problems criticizing the Cultural Revolution, Xi has been reluctant to do so. He recently did criticize it in a very oblique fashion, but Xi is obviously reluctant to "throw shade" on Mao, as he wants to compare himself favourably to Mao (who is very popular among Chinese youth). So all that to say, while a ban on young people playing video games in and of itself is certainly not a neo-cultural revolution, when taken in the broader context, it is one part of a slow burning trend to reimagine China domestically in service of the Party.

If Xi Jinping thought is what is being used in China, it's good that it's a "mandatory subject".  It would be great if "global imperialist totalitarianism" was a subject in the US or "imperial military client state" was a subject in other places, but this type of self reflection and self explanation is not present

Reimagine China domestically in service of the party, interesting, considering the party consists of millions of Chinese people

Edited September 3, 2021 by ilqx hermolia xpli