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Steam has been banned in China

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Re: Steam has been banned in China

#461

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Aperocky wrote: post #240
chunghuaming wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an average Chinese citizen right now: - You cannot travel abroad (no passport issued for average citizens, except for those that study/work abroad) - You cannot go beyond China's intranet legally (VPN is technically illegal in China). VPN services keep getting slowed/banned. - You cannot transfer much money out of country legally (50k limit a year, but you end up going to bank 10+ times just to be able to transfer…

> You have to work 9-9-6. Which is why many citizens are lying flat (not working/pursuing marriage) None of the government/public workers are working that schedule. Or someone who finds a job in the private companies who aren't insane. > You are constantly subjugated to random mass covid testing, standing hours outside in the cold. Speaking from anecdotal experience, my parent has been subjugated to none in 2021 beca…

> None of the government/public workers are working that schedule. Or someone who finds a job in the private companies who aren't insane.

Oddly enough, on my first trip to China in 1999, everyone was still expected to work Saturdays. The change to getting Saturday off is relatively recent…maybe 15 or so years ago?

> Except that everyone does, and I'm not aware of any prosecutions. Also, Spiderman, BTS, squid game does not even touch laws, they just haven't been screened in cinemas, you can still get them from different sources (which often means piracy in China).

“Rule by law”, as opposed to “rule of law”, means laws are arbitrarily enforced according to the whims of the party. So they aren’t going to prosecute you for watching banned media…until they want to get you for something (and in that case, they’ll find something).

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#462

Post by rosndo »

Ostrogodsky wrote: post #299
rosndo wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit. Shit like this is almost exclusively a Chinese activity https://www.propublica.org/article/purdue-president-condemns... You can find countless examples of groups of Chinese people engaging in downright horrible behavior like this, good luck finding many western counterparts. Where are the western nationalists SWATting families of people who dare to say critical things of their governments? Nobody will send…

I dont know if you are being naive or a troll. In any case, for the benefit of other people reading this thread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://theintercept.com/2014/09/25/managing-nightmare-cia-m... https://theintercept.com/2019/10/22/terrorism-fbi-political-... https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2016/11/5/13533838/history-...

The fact that you had to link to COINTELPRO is pretty revealing :)

Grasping at straws, no?

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#463

Post by RyEgswuCsn »

jdefr89 wrote: post #297
Aperocky wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have to work 9-9-6. Which is why many citizens are lying flat (not working/pursuing marriage) None of the government/public workers are working that schedule. Or someone who finds a job in the private companies who aren't insane. > You are constantly subjugated to random mass covid testing, standing hours outside in the cold. Speaking from anecdotal experience, my parent has been subjugated to none in 2021 beca…

Are you saying China isn't constantly monitoring their population? Are they not the dystopian dictatorship they pretend not to be? I am not so sure I can be convinced when they literally tell citizens how long they can and cannot play video games.... Sorry, behaviors don't lie.

By “monitoring” did you mean “cameras everywhere in case something happens” type of monitoring or the Orwellian mass surveillance?

As for the play-time restrictions —- how is it much different from drinking age restrictions that are pretty ubiquitous around the world?

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#464

Post by xedrac »

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 was in China for about a month, up until a couple weeks before the covid outbreak started. The internet was so locked down I could hardly do anything. Thankfully I had set up my laptop and home server with Wireguard, so I was able to route everything through my home server back in the US. Interestingly, the factory I was in had a room with a "special" connection to the internet, which apparently wasn't nearly as locked down (but probably monitored heavily). This was so they could do things like video calls with businesses outside the country. I don't know if this is representative of China in general, but it was certainly oppressive.

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#465

Post by freeflight »

chunghuaming wrote: post #335
stelonix wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's obvious for us who have been oppressed by the empire, for those who live there it might be impossible to see. They're the ones under propaganda 24/7, after all. Occam's razor works really well for many users of this site, but as soon as the subject is a rival superpower, everything is thrown out the window and it's the usual McCarthyism.

Please tell me where you are from that you're being oppressed by US right now , not 10 years ago or 100 years ago. Also, US isn't the only democracy in the world (it's actually a representative republic, but anyways).

No post body was provided.

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#466

Post by rajin444 »

pessimizer wrote: post #300
rajin444 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying Africans and (black, which I assume you mean but I’m trying to be charitable) people in your city are basically the same? I imagine the lives and cultures in Africa are vastly different than whatever city you’re in.

You're also assuming that their town doesn't have a lot of African immigrants living on its south side, and that the speaker wasn't (very questionably) saying that their experience with Africans affected the way they interacted with local black people.

That’s why I mentioned lives and cultures in Africa. African immigrant lives in x city are gonna be different than in Africa.

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#467

Post by whimsicalism »

simonh wrote: post #373
torstenvl wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a. Left China b. Are talking to a foreigner about politics This is a weird form of racism I see from a lot of people coming from a Chinese perspective, and it's very arrogant and abrasive. When a Chinese person is outside of China, they are the foreigner. Walking around the U.S. and calling people laowai is really a... questionable choice.

It’s simply writing about Chinese attitudes and experiences when abroad, and therefore using phrasing from the point of view of the person in question.

Thank you.

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#468

Post by hymnsfm »

gavinray wrote: post #367
wegrwerg wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that link is the best representation of the lot, then yeah, they deserved to be deleted. Walking around a neighborhood with a high density of a given ethnicity, showing them managing to enjoy the life they have does nothing to discredit the idea that the same ethnicity is oppressed and heavily targeted. Or to put it another way with a much more mild example, you can make a video full of happy black folks in some o…

I'm not intending/trying to start any sort of argument about how things actually are. I have no idea. I've never been to China. It could be really bad, exactly the way the video makes it out to be. The video could be dramatized, and not representative of the situation as a whole. I'm not sure I would believe things that China told me about the US By the same logic, I'm not sure I believe all the things that US/US-all…

No post body was provided.

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#469

Post by ashwagary »

mcculley wrote: post #362
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 have been studying Mandarin and reading about China for years. I suspect that China is so big and diverse that the average Chinese person cannot speak generally about China. I wouldn’t expect someone who has only lived in Alabama to be able to describe America generally. Yet we fall into that trap often with other cultures.

Do you think this problem is 4 times worse in China because of the population size.?

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#470

Post by xinniethepooh »

tombh wrote: post #59
siva7 wrote: post #25

What is going on here with the comment section? Seems like it's flooded with pro ccp activists

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.

It's curious that you say 'historically unprecedented imperial past' - imperialism typically has to do with having a ruler, and exerting diplomatic or military force to influence other nations.

Why do you say this is historically unprecedented? China has been imperialist since its beginning, and continues its imperialism with Hong Kong, South china sea, Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Myanmar ...

What 'historically unprecedented imperial past' are you referring to that isn't preceded by China's?

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