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Steam has been banned in China

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Re: Steam has been banned in China

#151

Post by alisonatwork »

RealityVoid wrote: post #118
legofr wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm personally opposed to the idea of visiting certain countries, such as China and North Korea, to 'see for yourself', especially when you don't know the language, when you're not willing to risk your life to understand and uncover the parts the government doesn't want you to see, like VICE did in Xinjiang: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7AYyUqrMuQ That being said, if you go then please try to walk into a random h…

I am surprised at what you say regarding the hosting of foreigners. My girlfriend was there for a couple of months and she didn't notice any such thing, and she actually rented a place with a couple of friends, also foreigners. Is this what you describe because of racism or because of government?

Both. I have been refused access to a place because the landlord was openly racist and didn't want to rent to me after she found out I was a foreigner. There is pretty much no recourse for foreigners who are victims of racism in China, it's an extremely racist country. When you're a foreigner you just kinda have to accept that there are people who will cross the street or shield their kids when they see you, loudly complain when you sit next to them on the bus, refuse to do business with you, etc etc. Of course in rich areas of tier one cities where the government has an image to uphold, this will happen much less frequently.

That said, definitely in the case of hotels there are loads of hotels it seems there is a legal aspect as well. If you lived in China you might be familiar with the long and boring process of registration with the police every time you move house. Sometimes you even have to register at more than one place because you moved into a different urban area. According to the law, all foreigners must do this everywhere they go in China, including tourists who are on holiday. It wouldn't be very efficient to make tourists spend a couple hours at the police station every time they checked into a hotel, so some hotels have some arrangement with the local police to do this on their guests' behalf behind the scenes. Most tourists nowadays don't even know that they have been registered with the police everywhere they travel. But smaller hotels don't provide that service. I have successfully blagged my way into staying at one smaller hotel by assuring them i would visit the local police myself to register, but a lot of them don't want the hassle or (perhaps) attention from the local authorities, so they just ban foreigners.

When I left China it was during the pandemic, and pretty much no hotels at all would allow foreigners to stay. This was xenophobia, pure and simple. There were a few times I had to first visit the police station and ask the police where I could stay, because hotel after hotel after hotel refused me, despite my green health code, valid visa and so on.

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#152

Post by beebmam »

What will happen to Chinese games on Steam? I will be profoundly sad if they disappear. For example: Dyson Sphere Program is one of my favorite games of all time. If that's gone, I'm going to have a hard time not making the CCP my mortal enemy

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#153

Post by NamTaf »

foverzar wrote: post #36
meibo wrote: post #2

Note: this refers to the global Steam service/community - Valve still offers Steam China with a very limited/censored selection of mostly-Valve games, adhering to local child protection laws. Most Chinese Steam users have historically been using the global service instead, as this Chinese version of Steam has only been available since February 2021.

I really love how we all have an impression of China as a country without access to global internet, but then there are things like "Most Chinese Steam users have historically been using the global service instead". Really makes you want to visit and see how this actually works for yourself. The more I read about China, the more unbelievably contradictive it gets.

As other posts have said, the GFW isn’t just a whole heap of blocked IPs. There’s some of that (Google, FB, etc.), but a lot more of it is DPI and other inspection techniques that also have the effect of slowing overseas data to a crawl. In that sense it is quite sophisticated.

I remember getting 300KB/sec at the best of times to overseas sites. VPNs didn’t really make a difference for speed (I believe I had poor routing on top of that), but I could use WG and SS to maintain access to blocked content for weeks on end.

The end result is that internet users are corralled into domestic services where the CCP can flex its power. If anything overseas continues to be too anti-government then it cops a more concrete block.

As also mentioned, the educated class might get VPN access but Joe Bloggs on the street won’t know how to. Also, it’s hard to get a VPN from within China, but once set up with one you can relatively easily keep using it.

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#154

Post by jfoster »

dragonelite wrote: post #134

Wouldn't be surprised if tencent and others are going to launch their own app store. Tencent already partially did with the epic game store. Pull some string in China to block steams global edition to even out the fight for epic game store. Tencent owns like 40~48% of epic.

I didn't know until now that Tencent owned such a large stake in Epic. Makes me wonder a little about the disputes with Google & Apple.

Whilst Epic seems to be fighting the good fight, I've thought it was very odd that they were putting so much on the line in their Google & Apple battles. Now I have to wonder if Tencent endorsed those legal battles with some more ambitious goal in mind.

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#155

Post by whimsicalism »

philliphaydon wrote: post #132
simonh wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The communist party party has successfully managed to associate love of China with loyalty to the party and government, and criticism of the party with being “anti-Chinese”. So being pro-democracy in Hong Kong is being anti-China, and opposing the ethnic and cultural suppression in Xinjiang is China hating. My wife is Chinese and we have a Chinese friend here in the UK we have to be careful what we say to. She gets u…

> We love China too, just not the communist party. I lived in singapore for 10 years until recently moving to Taiwan, this is basically the view of everyone from China I met. “I love China but I hate the government, that’s why I left” It’s a shame because the actions of the CCP are making people blame Chinese people. But the majority of people from China that I’ve met are awesome.

Well yeah, you're self selecting for people who

a. Left China b. Are talking to a foreigner about politics

CCP maintains considerable support among the mainland population.

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#156

Post by learc83 »

whimsicalism wrote: post #137
arvigeus wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on where she lived. Beijing, Shanghai and other first tier cities are ok for foreigners. The further away you get, the more blurry situation gets.

Quoted post unavailable.

Where did you get this from? US hotels most definitely do not “register (resident or non-resident) guests with the local government”.

A few states require hotel guests to present an ID at checkin.

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#157

Post by hwers »

beebmam wrote: post #152

What will happen to Chinese games on Steam? I will be profoundly sad if they disappear. For example: Dyson Sphere Program is one of my favorite games of all time. If that's gone, I'm going to have a hard time not making the CCP my mortal enemy

(Wow thanks for that gem, looks amazing I just bought it in case it goes away.)

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#158

Post by tombh »

kmlx wrote: post #70
tombh wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must offer another data point. I'm British, and often find myself in these threads criticising criticism of China. Not because I'm being paid by the CCP, but because I believe that mainstream anti-Chinese sentiment tells us more about the West's psychological struggles to come to terms with its own historically unprecedented imperial past, than it does about China itself.

> West's psychological struggles to come to terms with its own historically unprecedented imperial past, than it does about China itself. oh come on. we criticise China because it’s whole political system, that was set up very recently btw, fights against basic rights we take for granted in the West. not because of what the romans or european empires did hundreds of years ago, but because of what China is doing right…

Whilst I readily admit that focussing my attention on the West's criticism of China depletes my limited resources to affect positive change in China, I actually believe I am ultimately having a greater impact.

What I'm saying is that if we truly have China's, or namely humanity's best interests at heart when we criticise China, then we could profoundly increase our effectiveness if we demonstrated even just a basic understanding of context. Namely that the West is defined by its colonialism — its power and influence comes from exploitation of more than half the world.

To give an example, if a government truly wants people to wear masks and socially isolate, then the prime minister (Boris Johnson of the UK in this case), should not throw private parties.

We can argue about whether what the West did was net good or bad, but I don't think we can argue about whether the effectiveness of one's words are diminished by acts that are contrary to those words.

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#159

Post by ganzuul »

topspin wrote: post #12
LudwigNagasena wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It is amusing. They could have gone on filling the oceans with plastic and using banned CFCs and gamifying life on Earth through Social Credit all while enjoying near total deference from the prevailing virtuegeist of the West. But instead they chose to mess with LGBTQ and all of the sudden they're evil incarnate.

This is easy to understand. All the things you mention are issues that affect everybody. A better understanding of what it means to be man affects a very small percentage, so when when a govt looks past everything it should care about in order to mess with natural roles then it is really obvious that they are in the wrong.

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#160

Post by jfoster »

NamTaf wrote: post #153
foverzar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really love how we all have an impression of China as a country without access to global internet, but then there are things like "Most Chinese Steam users have historically been using the global service instead". Really makes you want to visit and see how this actually works for yourself. The more I read about China, the more unbelievably contradictive it gets.

As other posts have said, the GFW isn’t just a whole heap of blocked IPs. There’s some of that (Google, FB, etc.), but a lot more of it is DPI and other inspection techniques that also have the effect of slowing overseas data to a crawl. In that sense it is quite sophisticated. I remember getting 300KB/sec at the best of times to overseas sites. VPNs didn’t really make a difference for speed (I believe I had poor rou…

How does DPI work on encrypted traffic? Most of the web uses HTTPS now. Are they able to decrypt most of that?
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