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Sup Guys.

Just thought I'd make you aware that China has banned video games for under 18's; except from between 8pm-9pm on Fridays, weekends and holidays.

And because you need your national ID number and a face scan to even access your games in the first place; there's no way around it.

They have also decided to ban traps, because the CCP has realised that their policies and gratuitous propaganda program has created an entire generation of sheltered, self-indulgent pussies.

So what do we think is going to go next?

I personally think it's going to be either laughter or bright colours.

The government forcing you to be masculine is ironically the most beta thing ever

Seems to me the reason for it is that there are some serious behind-the-scenes shit happening in China.
>The unemployment rate for ages between 16-24 has risen to 16.2% in July, from 15.4 in June.
>There is a 996 Work Culture in China, i.e. people work from 9am to 9pm 6 days a week, which makes for extremely exhausted peoples.
>There is tremendous pressure for people to buy real estate. I mean tremendous. And this is what's driving the housing cost crisis in China. A) because of the gender ratio imbalance there is a lot of competition to get girlfriends and wives, and if you don't own a house you're shit out of luck. B) Almost half of all Beijing population are migrant workers from the rural countryside, and because of the way the census system in China works despite living and working in Beijing they are not counted as Beijing residents. C) There is no other investment outlet for people in China but property. Companies are always subject to being nationalized, or falling apart once the subsidies end. So people invest heavily into housing because so far housing costs have continually risen. This is leading people to work asanine hours to allow China to be the factory of the world.

There is now even a movement called the Lie Flat movement where Chinese millennials are literally just lying down in public spaces to sleep, refusing to work, refusing to participate in the rat race. China has been cracking down on this hard.

The other major element of Chinese demographic issues is that due to the one child policy there is an entire generation or two of extremely pampered single children. And because for a long time the only way Chinese citizens can ever retire is through their children (Social Security was only recently introduced). These children are so coddled, and they are so valuable to the ordinary citizenry, the Chinese military has a major weakness: they are super casualty adverse.

This is, incidentally, why China constantly releases videos of how they train their army, their kids, it's propaganda.

Similarly, the ban on video games is because they are distracting the populace from being good workers. Work work work, because Chinese economy is SO dependent on growth and trade that if work ever slows down it could spiral into an economic collapse.

According to this BBC Article

"In 2019, during further moves on censorship, China blurred out the earlobes of some of its young male pop stars in television and internet appearances to hide their piercings. Tattoos and men's ponytails have also previously been blurred from screens. "

LMAO IMAGINE HAVING YOUR HAIR CENSORED

Being a femboy is now the "alpha" and manly thing to do in China or at least rebellious and brave

How strange

The the de-feminization of Chinese men was originally announced back in late January this year, but this is the first time they've taken any action against it, to the best of my knowledge.

Also, to add to the point Chewy Bunny made, there have been massive protests by young Chinese lately due to this culture of always striving and working to be the best has led to a drastic shortage in blue-collar workers; as everyone sees it as being beneath them.

Instead of opening the jobs up to foreigners or trying to make low-level jobs less hellish; the government instead decided to simply forcefully change all of these colleges into more practical, hands-on colleges.

a more detailed video can be found here.

Now, the current students will still be studying the same subjects that they have been, but they are concerned that these new merged institutions will be less prestigious than they were when they were independent.

Because they will.

And when you've been told by your all-powerful government that the Chinese people are the best in the world and that they deserve to be the rulers of the world; to find out your part to play in all of this is to be working in a factory or cleaning toilets until the day you die is just simply unacceptable.

So competition for all of the management and more "upper-class" jobs is absolutely insane, with even the smallest detail being the difference between life and death.

Probably literally, given their somewhat terrifying suicide rate with a large proportion of those being between 15-34 years old.

Of course these numbers are just for successful suicides. According to other sources, although these things are a bit nebulous, in recent years, there have been around two million suicides that either failed or were prevented annually.

This may also go to explaining the recent introduction of the three-child policy.

China's birth rate has taken a steep decline and the attempt to boost it 2016 by allowing parents to legally have two kids has failed to halt it.

The issue is that Chinese couples simply can't afford to have kids; as it would put their careers in jeopardy and most are just managing to get by simply by themselves. Having just the one child, let alone two or three, might just be too much for them to cope financially.

Also, who is going to look after the child if you're both working 12-hour shifts, 6 days a week?

Although the 996 work culture has been declared illegal very recently; it was illegal before and has been for years, but companies still expect it.

So what we have is a rather viscous cycle of there being not enough people to work the lower-level jobs that keep China functioning; so the ones that do, have to work absurd hours for little pay; which means most of them can't have children of their own; which means there are less people to do the jobs that keep China functioning.

Unless something drastic happens, in about twenty-thirty years-time when it's our generation in charge; China is very likely going to go belly-up, because there will simply be no people left to run the country to a high enough level to maintain the only God the CCP worship.

The GDP.

>no video games
>no femboys

Man as if I needed more reasons to hate China's government.

Feel sorry for the Chinese kids, their life already sounds stressful enough as is.

If there's any silver lining to it, those who are for banning games and other frivolous/'unmasculine' media are now in the company of literal dictators. Not a good look.

One can only wonder how long will the chinese youth put off with the state's bullshit?

An alpha femboy uprising will start soon at this rate

The CCP is actually oppressing gamers. The Chinese really do live in a society.

Meanwhile the classic, stereotypical image of a Chinese man includes the Qing Dynasty queue:

Oh the irony.

For all of China's posturing as an invincible superpower who can do no wrong and blames all their woes on some insidious foreign power, they sure do have a habit of humiliating themselves just when things are going their way for once. Who are they going to scapegoat when the undoing of their socioeconomic progress inevitably happens?

Scapegoating outside forces to distract from systemic problems is a typical tactic of authoritarians. Putin does it, Erdoğan does it, Orbán does it, Kim Jongun does it, Trump did it, and so does Xi Jinping.

They have also decided to ban traps, because the CCP has realised that their policies and gratuitous propaganda program has created an entire generation of sheltered, self-indulgent pussies.

imo the simpler explanation is cultural influence from South Korea, whose k-pop celebrities look practically identical to China's "niangpao" celebrities.

Probably literally, given their somewhat terrifying suicide rate with a large proportion of those being between 15-34 years old.

The study's given suicide rate works out to about 10 per 100,000 year which is in line with the Chinese government's own historical figures. The study also cites the WHO, which in 2016 put the age-adjusted suicide rate in China at 7.0 per 100,000. In 2019 the WHO updated that figure to 6.7 per 100,000, which is approximately half the rate of Japan and the U.S., and one-third the rate of South Korea. It's among the lowest in the world.

That's not to say you should trust the WHO ofc, just that the study you're linking doesn't say what you're implying it does.

The sources are in the links, and they then link onto where they got there info from, if you want to look further into this.

Oh, and in regards to the suicide rate.

The trouble with statistics like these is that they're not just flat numbers, it always "X out of 10'000" or "X out of a 1000" people.

This means countries with a larger population can have hundreds of thousands of people killing themselves, but because, in China's case, they literally have over a billion people, the statistics show it as being smaller than other countries with smaller populations.

Infuriatingly, no one gives a flat out answer as to how many this actually is.

So I'll try and work out a rough number myself.

Using current statistics, China's population is currently 1,445,088,627 (or 1.445 Billion).

To keep things consistent, we'll use the same source’s suicide rate of 8.1 out of a 100,000 people.

Unfortunately, this means were going to have use Algebra, which I have not used in 10 years, so take anything I come up with, with a pinch of salt.

So, if the rate in the suicide rate is the mathematical term, then, in order to work out the percentage, we move the decimal point one place to the left.

This gives us 0.81% out of 100,000.

To work out the the the number, we divide the two which gets us 810.

This gives us a percentage of 0.00005605192545744116% which will round to 0.000056%.

We then multiply the two numbers together, 1,445,088,627 X 0.000056, which gives us 80,924.963112 which we'll round to 80,925.

Now, as a whole, this is a small number compared to the overall population; but it's still 80,925 dead people.

This is based off the statistics and information provided by an opaque, authoritarian regime which will do anything to save face and what independent bodies without full access to the information have provided.

Since prevented suicides and failed attempts aren't kept track off, it's hard to say how many have tried but were unsuccessful.

Guess the Astolfo Monster Cock was more accurate than we thought.

Does Chinese government actually believe they're doing a good thing or are they very well aware how stupid this thing is. And how it fails the "how's this different" argument.

that should be something to be spammed for protest

I shouldn't be surprised by this level of authoritarianism from a Communist dictatorship.

Yeah but china isn't communist anymore
and this is just bizarre for any dictatorship
Winnie the pooh is batshit insane

And so it begins.

All the comments calling China's policies based just because they targeted a particular group they don't like made me lose faith in humanity

I'm seeing 3 kinds of people going "based" that are:
-People hating the celebrities, maybe it's the same people that hate the Hollywood celebrities.

-People that fetishises masculinity cheer on the femboy ban.

- And people, most likely game journalists, being ok with the video game limit ban.

Either way, they're justifying the CCP's increasingly totalitarian control over their populace and media because they happen to screw over "the right people". But that's probably par for the course for the YouTube demographic, which is full of people who somehow hates China's guts and yet admire and/or endorse totalitarian figures worldwide.

Question though: How does that "common prosperity" be any better than the Maoist thing? Do they actually believe that this is going to make world a better place? Do the heads of China do it just to see what happens?

People can get some very strange ideas in their heads about what it means to make the world a 'better place'. Reading about the "Great Leap Forward" and the "Cultural Revolution" is really horrifying, it's a good example of someone with completely skewed ideas implementing them to the detriment of their people.

Deng Xiaoping tenure wasn't what one would call 'good', he still oversaw crackdowns such as with the Tiananmen Square Massacre, but he still toned on a lot of idealogical zealotry, including a process of 'hiding their strength' and economic development to avoid ruffling feathers.

Xi Jinping in comparison seems more aggressive, which is compounded by an emphasis on ethno-nationalism.

What I find interesting from a political standpoint is that authoritarian communism (let's just call it Leninism as a shorthand, as it stood as the building blocks for the USSR, China, post-unification Vietnam, Cuba, et al) and fascism is that they build for an impossible utopia, account and even rely on piles of corpses to happen, but one is forever in the future while the other always in the past.

Leninism always plans for the "kill the Kulaks" moments that end up starving everything, but their plans are always building towards the future that can't happen because of sabotage from the kulaks they keep having to kill.

Fascism plans to eliminate the undesirable parasites in order to restore the past that keeps being taken from them because of the parasites they have to kill.

In the end it's auths gunna auth but the way they use temporarily opposite goals to reach the exact same place is interesting. Also my guess is that Xi is laying down the groundwork for hereditary rule and the empire long divided will unite.

I always wondered how many years China would stay a super power, from the looks of these new prohibitions looks that they won't be there too long.

They are going up because everyone else is falling down.

Also it's been 20 years since NYT gloated about the communists collapsing, look at how that went.

Funny how the neoliberals simultaneously thought they were at the end of history while also worshiping the law of creative destruction like a god

To be the devil's advocate, the idea of creative destruction is that failure is a necessary part of creation and growth ( with new technologies destroying old industries and institutions) at least according to Schumpeter. Otherwise it stagnates. How that turned into a belief that non-interference is always necessary and everything eventually turns for the best is beyond me.

Neoliberaliam has reigned for too long, some have even forgotten that it's just a school of thought in economics, one of many (and no, I'm not mentioning communism. Even capitalistic economic systems have other economists than just Friedman). They weren't shaken by 2008, but they'll have to change at some point, or die. Not only them, but even the CCP may have reigned for too long.

The most optimisitic theory is that if there's a chinese century, their society will have to change. The view of Xi is that it must become an even worse autocracy, but that's not guaranteed, especially if they're afraid of small things such as feminine men. Who knows,"there's no such thing as utopia or dystopia, only protopia, where everything is constantly changing".

Chinese authorities order gaming giants Tencent and NetEase to end focus on profits and cut content perceived to be breeding ''sissy'' men. The move is the latest in Beijing's attempt to direct youth culture, gender ideals and the influence of big tech

So apparently China is not only focusing on getting rid of effeminate men celebrities, but also effeminate men in video games.

This might lead both Genshin Impact and Arknights for example into trouble, though both of those are not under NetEase or Tencent.

BAHAHAHA, Beijing can't be serious. They're aware that their efforts to crush nebulous media supposedly showing things that aren't masculine enough for their tastes make them look more effeminate and insecure than the alleged femboys they're after, right? At this rate, the century of humiliation might become two centuries of humiliation.

And just now, FGO China Removes Names of Chinese Heroic Spirits
Weibo link

So the new changes are:

Jing Ke – Assassin 042

Lu Bu – Berserker 049

Wu Zetian (Nightless City Shadow) – Assassin 170

Nezha – Lancer 193

Xiang Yu – Berserker 226

Qin Liangyu – Lancer 228

Qin Shi Huang – Ruler 229

Yu Meiren – Assassin 230

Red Hare – Rider 231

Sima Yi – Rider 241

Yang Guifei – Foreigner 275

Summer Yu Meiren – Lancer 288

Sanzang, both versions of Yu (both Xiang Yu and Consort Yu) and Yang Guifei also getting their art removed like Wu Zetian.

All the mentioned characters also (likely) getting their voices removed, but it's still tentative at this point. Compensation is 40 SQ.

And this might be the reason why the censorship happened

The CCP is operating camps of Uyghurs, it brutally cracked down on Hong Kong, it has strengthened autocracies worldwide and has made it's expansionists aims clear.

Not only are they evil, they're also petty enough to 'control cultural influences' by cracking down on celebrities and entertainment. People mention 1984 for everything, but this is like how the Party was so obsessed with control it would try to gain control over even one's personal habits and thoughts.

1984 isn't even banned in China.

Give it time…

First they came for the video games, and I said nothing, because I wasn't a Gamer.

Then they came for the traps, and I said nothing, because I wasn't a trap.

Then they came for Tik Tok, and I said nothing, because I wasn't a tik toker.

And then the stock market crashed, they couldn't afford to come after me.

More like cheap affordable housing time.

I don't think buying a fourth house is going to help them.

Almost every single person in China owns a house or a flat and almost 80% have 2 with around 60% owning three.

Because of poor investment options and social welfare programs; nearly everyone invests in infrastructure like some which people will invest in works of art; as the assumption is that the price will only go up.

This of course is madness, but with not only individual people, but the almost a third of local government revenue tied up in such schemes, even the drop of a single percent could have a terrible domino effect on the economy as a whole.

The video below explains the situation much better than I am able to.

You did think people would learn to stop dumping their entire wealth into investments after two(or three) financial crisis. Then again the Leeman brothers had a loss impact on the Chinese economy then it did on the US.

Would be interesting to see how the government going to involve. Probably end up in pieces if they can't pay up. Regardless of results would give the capital more reasons to centralize everything.

China makes the US look like ultra competent saints

So there's more info
China held a meeting 2 days ago to roll-out the most restrictive regulation on video game. It was held in Chinese censorship department (administration of culture and publishing) and the representatives from video game companies.

From gay relationship ban (must be called friendship), to heavy LGBTQ+ bans, banning anything that not historic accuracy (rip Azur Lane, Girls Frontline, etc) , femboys (and lmao it featured Venti), to a soft ban on Japan, censor lewd scenes, and forcing China game devs to use the "Chinese map" so it doesn't feature Taiwan as a country.

For some reason, they're censoring violence and gore which is something that Japan did years back, idk why, but this is a self own to China.

And there's a portion of China having a grudge to Japan since it seems that Japan culture is getting more influence compared to China.

Here's the text version

China is clearly falling apart, this insanity is unsustainable and their economy is a bubble.

I live in a third world country with a crime rate through the roof…and I am still glad I dont live in China

>With these new implementations the South China Morning Post notes that violent titles which allow players to be good or bad wouldn't be seen favorably.

>"Some games have blurred moral boundaries. Players can choose to be either good or evil … but we don't think that games should give players this choice … and this must be altered," said the memo.

Why is it that authoritarian regimes always has these little euphemisms? "It must be altered, needs must be accommodated, disruptive elements have been … removed".

RIP Chinese Game developers, for a while it seemed like they were developing into their own and actually becoming a force in their own right. More broadly, RIP most of China's cultural output, they've cracked down on films, books, series and now it's new media and games.

RIP Genshin Impact