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China Cracks Down on Internet Cafes 39

Posted by Zonk from the take-it-elsewhere-buddy dept.
China has increased restrictions on internet game cafes. They've clamped down on anti-government slogans or displays and are now barring teenagers from them completely. Gamasutra reports: "'With the development of the Internet, there has been some harmful and illegal content,' said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao. 'The Chinese government has adopted some management measures so as to limit the immoral and harmful content, especially for young people.' Chinese regulation of Internet content has become controversial in recent weeks due to popular search engine Google's acquiescence to Chinese censorship of its results in exchange for official license to operate in the country."
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China Cracks Down on Internet Cafes More

China Cracks Down on Internet Cafes

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  • Looks like all the worries over a cold war between the aging US and up-and-coming China just fizzled out. It's like the Chinese had the enemy in their sights, pulled the hammer back, then just turned the gun around and blew their head right off.

    Freedoms of religion, speech, and commerce mean nothing to the common Chinaman. Take away their Starcraft and you'll have instant civil war.

    • Re:Tied up nicely (Score:3, Informative)

      by oni ( 41625 )
      a) it's the koreans who are known for playing Starcraft
      b) "chinaman" ??? the 19th century called. They want their trite racism back.
      • I wonder, what could be racist about referring to a man from China as a chinaman? I understand it's not the preferred nomenclature, but it's hardly derogatory.

        • Re:Tied up nicely (Score:2, Informative)

          by Oniko ( 865215 )
          Uhhh.... riiight. You know, the word just means "black" in Spanish, so I'll just refer to every black person I see as a "negro". It's not the preferred nomenclature, but by that logic, it's hardly derogatory...

          ...with the exception of the very, very overt connotations of rascism and the association with social discourse from periods in which rascism was considered acceptable. A "chinaman" is a buck-toothed, slant-eyed, can't-pronounce-'r's (which is actually a japanese linguistic trait), culturally backw

  • Seriously. Honest question. Can this potentially impact the gold farming/spawn camping industry in modern MMOs?

    And, yes, I know they're not all Chinese. Yes, I know not every farmer is an adolescent. Yes, I know a large number of farming outfits are run from private offices. So don't start.

    • It's an interesting question you bring up. If Blizzard or any other MMORPG developer was interested in eliminating Chinese Farmers (in China), the MoTD would be "Falun Gong, democracy, freedom of speech, and other misc. Western Ideals FTW."

      Since they're not making any pro-democracy statments, I deduct therefore that Blizzard loves farmers.
    • I do not know much about the farming industry but I think it is safe to say that the farming is not done in public (and probably expensive) internet cafes. Few gold farmers are freelance, most of them are working for somebody and getting paid for meeting a quota every day or week. If a farmer had to pay to use the machine they are at and pay for an account with subscription the whole process would not be nearly as profitable. And if the money in china is anything like the US, it would be hard to get any k
      • Yeah, that's about what I figured... They won't stop stealing my crafting nodes any time soon, I suppose. Maybe one or two that just passively pawns off things they don't need to the companies will be stopped, but I'm sure the bulk'll still be out there.

        Didn't know if someone out there had some more in-depth information on how things are going to be regulated or not, though. Never hurts to ask. Usually.

    • I'd like to think you just answered your own question. To recap: Can this potentially impact the gold farming/spawn camping industry in modern MMOs?

      With the conditions that:

      • I know they're not all Chinese.
      • Yes, I know not every farmer is an adolescent.
      • Yes, I know a large number of farming outfits are run from private offices.

      Well, now we have to play the odds. For this to affect gold farming, there needs to be a good percentage of gold farmers affected by this.

      • You concede they're not all Chinese.
      • Come on, if that was an honest question, and you *do* recognize everything you said, why bother asking it? Just to link gold farmers in? Come on... don't lie.

        Just hoping to spark some intelligent conversation on a topic related to this issue that I could actually discuss. I'm hardly a master of international censorship policy and politics, but I've seen firsthand how this particular region's internet users can affect things I do. I tacked that addendum on at the end to ward off the "Not all farmers are C

  • If anyone is still looking for a way to let someone skirt the blocks:

    This looks like a typical proxy method, but NPR was running a story this morning on Circumventor [peacefire.org] - a way to gain access to blocked content by using an outside proxy.

    I wish this were a "solution" but it's just another bathtub distillery.

  • YRO? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The use of the guise of "protecting the children" to allow censorship is something that definitely belongs in YRO, and is very frightening.

    It is eerie, blocking content for the purpose of "Protecting the children".... COPA anyone? If the government were censoring our access to information, and doing it well how would we ever know? /* Warning: heavy usage of vast right-wing conspiracy theories follows: */

    Hell, all these stories about the great firewall of china could be government introduced filler to distr

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday February 16, 2006 @03:41PM (#14736417)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I'd be much happier if the U.S. (and anyone else who dosn't) would learn the difference between capitalism and democracy.
    • I'm not sure how many Chinese have you been talking to or where they come from, but in my experience, the Chinese from at least the northern provinces (north of Yang Zi river, within China or overseas) tend to see it rather differently. To me, the impressions is more like: Taiwan is another province of China, it'll be back to China sooner or later. Surprisingly enough, I find the same thing to be true for some of the Taiwanese I know too.

      I think you underestimate how much patriotism the Chinese, especial

    • Captain Obvious is Captain Idiot! some idiotic white guy who thinks he knows all that just 'cuz he's talked to some chinese of unknown origin...

      Vast majority of mainland chinese considers Taiwan as a province. Call it brainwashing, call it national pride, call it whatever, just don't go off running your mouth as if it were a fact. Most Taiwan-Taiwanese doesn't like KMT. So here in the US, there's a distinction of "taiwan-taiwan", "mainland-taiwan", and "mainland" chinese. And why did you drag Taiwan into th
    • Capitalism is winning the hearts and minds of the Chinese over communism

      The few Chinese people I have met are the most capitalist people around. Their government may be communist but alot of their attitudes, especially regarding money, are as capitalist as anyone in the western world.

  • Losing the Mandate of Heaven (Score:3, Interesting)

    by paladinwannabe2 ( 889776 ) on Thursday February 16, 2006 @04:35PM (#14736904)
    I feel that the Chinese Government has been in an interesting position for some time- in order to compete with the developed nations they need educated, intelligent workers, they need technology, and they need communications. However, an intelligent, informed, communicating populace is much harder to control than a population that has no phone lines, can't read, and never learned to question assumptions or think critically.

    They are trying to keep a tight grip on everything while the world is changing around them. Already their system is more capitalistic than communistic in many respects- but it is a totalitarian capitalism. The Communist party has the power and they are afraid to let the reins of power go. Most Chinese in power have a few skeletons in their closets, and I feel many of them are worried that if they lost control, they would be arrested, tried, and executed.

    I'm curious how China will look like in 20 years. I'm thinking they will either become the next United States or be involved in a bloody revolution. Maybe even both.

  • I keep hearing about them cracking down on internet cafes, but last time I visited they were just as plentiful.

    Sure, some websites don't work (replaced by advertisements, funny, and says alot about modern China) and they have official licenses posted up, but atleast the internet works. And cheap too. For a few bucks you can surf all day.

    My impression from outside of China is of a kind of dystopia where the information police patrol for thougth criminals. However, within China I never had any problem getting
    • I also doubt the "truthiness" of this article. Stories like this tend to get alot of play in the press because people like pointing out that, "Hey, you think current US wiretapping is bad? Check out those Commies in China. That's some good ol' fashioned totalitarianism for ya. You got it good in the US!"

      I'm visiting China right now and realistically, there's lots of official government edicts, both old and new, that people only pay lip service to or don't bother following at all. Remember the governmental m

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