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Steam has been banned in China

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Re: Steam has been banned in China

#221

Post by beebeepka »

chunghuaming wrote: post #214
beebeepka wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

You call it jingoism. I call it rise against dictatorships destroying democracy's way of life.

Is that so? Have you noticed which country is the source of this war against evil communist dictatorship? The US.

Now, let's take a step back and consider some facts

1. China has not attacked any country in a long time.

2. The champions of free speech and democracy have destroyed millions just this last 20 years.

Seems to me the villains are the ones screaming the loudest against their economic rival.

You really think any of this has anything to do with human rights?

You only hear the arguments of one side. At least acknowledge this simple fact, then go from there

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#222

Post by chunghuaming »

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.

Doubtful, Xi Jing Ping is hellbent on destroying the Chinese tech industry right now

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#223

Post by schuke »

manuelabeledo wrote: post #92
ChemSpider wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That time is gone meanwhile. In late 2019 I had a very hard time getting access to my Gmail account, despite trying all the usual workarounds and staying in the best hotels in town. Even non-English news sites were blocked, sites that I could browse freely just a few years ago. Skype worked ok, but text chat only. Images never arrived.

Funnily enough, Google Fi worked just fine in late 2019. I’m wondering if foreign SIM cards are not subjected to filtering.

From what I read, the way mobile data roaming is designed is basically like a VPN that connects you to your own home provider. Thus if you're roaming in China you don't get the renowned GFW hospitality. That's why some local people use foreign / HongKong sim cards for GFW-less mobile data.

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#224

Post by chunghuaming »

netcan wrote: post #220
axiosgunnar wrote: post #50

> The move comes as a surprise How dense and gullible do you have to be? Do people keep forgetting they’re dealing with an authoritarian dictatorship? ANYTHING is on the table, nothing should come as a surprise. Divest from China and diversify manufacturing sources, otherwise we will wake up one day imprisoned, and „the move will come as a surprise“

>> Divest from China and diversify manufacturing sources Who is this aimed at? Major brands (apple, tesla, disney, etc.) are not going to divest from China. China is a big part of their future market, they hope. They're going to invest wherever their market is. Obviously they know that this comes with strings and risks attached. They will get sideswiped with rules, punitive or otherwise. Authoritarian government acti…

> Major brands (apple, tesla, disney, etc.) are not going to divest from China

Diversification is already happening - 20,000 foreign companies have left China in the last 4 years. Samsung, LG, GoPro, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk6lkW4A7Ec

> China is a big part of their future market

The Unemployed and semi-unemployed might reach 300M+ people in China. Chinese consumer market is slowing down big time - Lost decades just like Japan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk6lkW4A7Ec

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#225

Post by newhouseb »

baybal2 wrote: post #165
flohofwoe wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IME the Great Firewall doesn't outright block global traffic apart from some selected services, but makes them so unreliable and slow that it's almost impossible to directly connect and use services from the other side (think 'analog modem speed'), companies (maybe just IT companies, not sure) can get an exemption (they need to connect to github after all), but even then it's not very reliable. If Steam had a working…

There are no such exemptions, and I don't know from where did this idea came

I worked in Beijing at Microsoft Research in 2008 and at the time they had a fiber link to Japan that was completely uncensored and the fastest internet I had ever used at the time. Perhaps this is no longer allowed but it certainly used to exist.

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#226

Post by freeflight »

legofr wrote: post #85
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.

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…

Reminds me of this channel 4 [0] interview with writer Benjamin Zephaniah. Tbh I find his reasoning, go there and see for yourself, much more convincing than your reasoning.

Particularly this;

> when you're not willing to risk your life to understand and uncover the parts the government doesn't want you to see

Just reads like FUD, it's not China that locks up people at the highest rate on the planet. That "feat" is reserved to a country were nobody would say "don't visit there you might die!" even tho the chance for that to happen there is much more likely than in China or NK, where most police don't even carry guns.

[0] https://youtu.be/zowOkv0Cuhk

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#227

Post by netcan »

chunghuaming wrote: post #214
beebeepka wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

You call it jingoism. I call it rise against dictatorships destroying democracy's way of life.

Possibly, but the problem with dichotomies is that they're dichotomous.

To the extent that they have teeth, anti-china nationalism, jingoism & anti-authoritarianism are very hard to distinguish. It has to do with motivations, and motivations are opaque, even to the first person.

I do think that the current anti-authoritarianism/jingoism is, currently, a stabilizing factor for the CCP. Most moderately pro-democracy person will get a whiff of the jingoism embedded within the anti-authoritarian "movement," and determine that these people are not their friends. Better to stick with the CCP than a faction where anti-chinese jingoism is indistinguishable from anti-ccp democracy motives.

China was authoritarian previously.

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#228

Post by bnralt »

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.

I think visiting and seeing the country for yourself is a good idea. I have a lot of experience with the country (lived there, keep in contact with many friends from there, consume a lot of TV and podcasts from there), and the picture of it usually painted by Hacker News comments is completely different from what I've experienced. I usually avoid the topic here, though, because heterodox opinions often are met with hostility or accusations of being propaganda.

In general, when it comes to other countries, I think visiting them when possible and talking with the people there when you can is often eye-opening and can reveal personal biases you didn't realize you had. To give another example, speaking with people from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc made me realize that many of the assumptions I had (adopted from the traditional "common sense" American narrative) were overly simplistic or just plain wrong.

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#229

Post by rootsudo »

legofr wrote: post #210
rootsudo wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is mostly because they don't know how to register foreign passports. If you show them how to do it and present your passport, it is not an issue. https://www.lostlaowai.com/blog/china-stuff/china-travel/for... So many foreigners/laowai spread the same misinformation. You can stay, if you have sufficient Chinese/Mandarin, you can explain the above and it works. If you have a good friend explain, it also works. Mo…

In every other country you show them your passport, you write your signature and you pay a deposit - done. In China you either need to go through an agency that have something similar to "The Negro Motorist Green Book" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Negro_Motorist_Green_Book ), or you need to speak Chinese, convince the reception that they don't need a certificate they believe they're legally required to have, c…

It's the same in China for most hotels that know what they're doing. " In every other country you show them your passport, you write your signature and you pay a deposit - done.".

If you go off the beaten path or less than 4 stars hotels, then that.

And not unique just in China, Japan will do it too with some places - granted mostly it's love hotels which is ironic cause they're not supposed to know whose checking in, no passport is required, but many a foreigner can't read Kanji or talk.

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