The voluntary self censorship of entertainment due to China.

Skepticism General Skepticism
1

In a slew of recent events it is coming more and more to the fore that China has, by the sheer implication of becoming an economic powerhouse, become a censor of nearly all content now distributed in the western world.

Most of us are hopefully aware of the protests that have seen a heavy handed China bearing down on the, until now, freedoms of Hong Kong. Well, a single tweet by someone in the NBA sent the sport into a spiral by revealing that the sport’s bosses care way more about money than western freedoms. As that debate is raging other stories are also raging.

Since it has come to light that Disney self-censors to keep itself in line with biggest market in Asia, the always irreverent “South Park” did an episode in which they lampoon Hollywood’s general self censorship on behest of China, especially Disney, the NBA furore, and the Winnie the Pooh affair, in an episode that got the entire series wiped off the face of China retroactively within days.

Meanwhile, gaming behemoth Blizzard Entertainment are doing some China damage control of their own.

So…

This is what imperialism feels like?

2

Yeah well, there’s a new big boy on the playground. I’m actually kind of enjoying it to see the Americans frantically scurrying around, or trying to convince themselves that China will collapse any moment now. I guess it will be less fun once Chinese troops are swarming all over South Africa, and bombs raining down on Pretoria, to “liberate the country.”

3

Hate to say it but that may be the lesser of two evils.

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The internet finds a way: In protest to Blizzard’s decision to revoke the prize money, the internet has decided to turn one of the characters of one of their biggest properties, “Overwatch”, into a Hong Kong protest meme so that China will have no option but to ban it.