I agree with mightygoobi

another note: W3 is extremely popular in China, and of the people who play it, a large percentage play DotA. Therefore, I think that China is a huge marketing opportunity for Demigod. Will Stardock jump at this opportunity?

MightyGoobi, I was watching the news and It was talking about the earthquake you had in China. And I was wondering what they are saying in your news outlet. Also what is happing right now? Are the earthquak victems getting aid, is the chinese military clearing the debrey. And also how powerull was the earthquake?

mightygoobi, your proselytizing of the Chinese government is superb, and perhaps some less intelligent Americans will believe every word. Frankly, I don't. You claim you can speak out against the government (without getting shot, hah). Thats fantastic, but here in America, we can CHANGE our governmental leaders. In fact, we can CHANGE the entire party of the government. Why is that possible? Because we had the balls to FIGHT for it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_revolution

Also, your moral equivalencing regarding a NATO bombing that kills a few people and the millions of people beaten, imprisoned, raped, murdered by your absolute dictatorship "communist" government has no comparison. You can rant about Americans killing a few of your people in a missile strike, yet you ignore the gross and well documented humans rights abuses of your own government on its own people because you personally "can complain" about your local puppet leaders? No matter what crap your propaganda control spreads about American foreign policy, there is no nation on the planet that is safer and more free then the United States and its citizens.

The Chinese people, no matter what they think they can "say" (and not "get shot" saying), are still controlled by their single party totalitarian dictatorship government like little robots. You think you have freedom because you can complain, when in reality, you have none. If the communist party some day decides to dispose of you goobi, they can and would make you disappear.

This is why some Americans hate the Chinese. While Americans fought and died for their freedom (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_revolution), the Chinese fought and died for their dictatorship (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_civil_war). Here we are today, the Chinese let themselves be pleased by more worthless crap (toys, cars, computers) but you ignore the most important thing, the freedom to determine your own future. The fact that you settle for your totalitarian government, while sitting in your homes watching your new TVs and eating rice disturbs me. If Americans had no chance to vote and choose their leaders nationally, many would be in the streets in murderous revolt.

"Give me Liberty, or give me Death!" - Patrick Henry, March 23 1775

yes, because everyone in the world needs to adopt the same FREEDOM AS #1 PRIORITY WOOOOOOOO viewpoint as americans right? subjectively comparing our resident country's values to other ones with a false sense of superiority and then whining when they don't match up is stupid. in MY country the ownership of robots made of plant leaves is the most important thing in society! man, I sure hate America for not having any photosynthetic androids, you villainous chlorophyll-hating scum.

i would assume you're a troll as that's amazingly over the top but meh whatever

I'd prefer not to have governmental officials slaughtering my own people by the tens of million. Liberty is pretty damn important in that case, huh?

I hate to break it to your 17 year old idealism, but there are some ideas that are good, and some ideas that are bad. Chinese totalitarian communist dictatorship? Bad. Freedom? Good.

65 million Chinese people have been killed (directly and indirectly) by their government for political reasons since the Chinese civil war. Freedom "AS #1 PRIORITY" looking pretty damn good right about now.

I'll try to answer some of these questions jpinard, but they do seem awfully generic "why are you evil" types. I'll try not to answer with a "because we're not" so hear this.
1. Tiananmen square is history, it happened, it was horrible and the specific incident ended before most people here were born. No amount of explaining can change that so its best to leave it at that. In fact, Tiananmen square is close to becoming a second Godwins law and it does get tiring.
2. This all depends on definitions. If you believe Tibet is an occupied sovereign state, then yes, China is exploiting Tibetian resources and arbitrarily issuing mining rights and leases without consent form the Tibetian Government in Exile. Does it take without giving? This one is a little harder to deny. Tibets modern infrastructure and local administration was built by the PRC because it considers Tibet to be part of its country. It therefore develops Tibet like how it would develop any other part of its country. Of course you may argue that this is all to facilitate the process of draining Tibet dry and oppressing its people so it is all about definitions. Where one sees a school, you might say it is an indoctrination centre, a hospital becomes a organ-stealing clinic, a police station becomes a death-squad base and a power plant is a means for providing continuous electrocution of detainees. Now, another effect of China treating tibet like part of the country is that the environment suffers. Why, because the environment in general suffers in China. There is no purposeful scorched-earth policy here, simply because China hates Tibetans, and I frankly find it disgusting when people add "China destroys Tibets Environment" to the Free Tibet routine as if Chinas own environment isn't worth their spit. I can try tell you that Tibet is part of China, but if you you don't agree I won't think less of you.
3. Pollution, ahh yes, all that horrendous volume of pollution that China is creating, it has surpassed the USA as top polluter in the world. Those perfidious Chinese, how dare they! Since one westerner is worth three Chinese and twelve africans, it is easy to see why people are outraged. I won't bother repeating the Delayed Industrial Revolution argument since some people will find it still has something to do with communism and being unfree. On the other hand the pollution does make me literally sick so rest assured you're not on the worst end of it.
4. Handling Taiwan(ROC).
First off, China(PRC) doesn't dominate Taiwan. China would very much like to but no, Taiwan just goes and does its thing how it likes. China used to treat Taiwan like how the USA treats Cuba. But today, relations range from cordial to cold depending on a complex ballet of actions, reactions and just general tit-for-tat. Actions include things like independence related election pitches, sovereignty speeches, territorial disputes, sabre rattling and George Bush opening his mouth. Reactions and counter-reactions generally consist of anti-secession laws, announced arms sales, military exercised, joint-military exercises, weapons tests, press releases of miscellaneous refutations, George Bush opening his mouth again, more sabre rattling and angry memos. This process repeats itself ad nauseum until people get tired and things go back to normal. Normal as in Taiwan trading with China and no angry words flying around compared to Taiwan trading with China and trading threats as well.
If you are concerned about China vetoing Taiwan at every turn and buying off countries to diplomatically isolate Taiwan, then I do agree that is pretty dirty work, but please realise that this is par for the course in international relations.
However, to elaborate on that and address Taiwans right to independence, I will examine the history of the argument. You may now the PRC's line on Taiwan reads something like "the inseparable brothers of the glorious motherland must be liberated from the capitalists dogs of the USA..blah blah.". What you may not know was that back in time, the ROC and the USA were committed to a policy of retaking the "rebellious" mainland and uniting it with the legitimate ROC government. It was taken for granted that every American administration since Truman would commit America to assist the ROC in retaking mainland China when the time came. Officially, the west denied the existence of the PRC and the ROC took the seat as a permanent member of the UN security council as the government of all of China. Eventually, common sense prevailed and the Nixon administration decided it was absurd to deny the representation of a fifth of the worlds population, and canned the liberation plans. The ROC was given the boot and the PRC now became the official China.
In what seems to be the most ironic Russian Reversal in the 20th Century, all the ROC's talk of liberation and unification came round to bite its ass.
"In Communist China, China liberates you!!" became the reality.
After a collective "oh shit" the ROC government realised that the USA weren't going to just give up their giant unsinkable carrier guarding the South China sea, so after a period of stonewalling someone came up with a new spin for the new age. Taiwan independence. Now, Taiwan independence isn't an entirely new thing, it was never permitted to be discussed until the late 80's (Taiwan wasn't a democracy until then).
For all its reasons for legitimacy the independence movement does not have a bright future. Whilst the ROC once had American support to retake the mainland, it now faces dwindling support to maintain its existence and both sides know it is now simply a waiting game. Now, there are legitimate reasons for Taiwanese independence, and it even may be the right thing to do. But the centuries long cause of the Taiwan Aborigines has been hijacked by whatever successive newcomer that arrives and takes power that it has largely lost its meaning. Oh, and it is idealistic and the world has no place for idealism.
As for Tibetan independence, I don't want to repeat the "17th century Imperial decree blah blah blah.. " nor do I want to hear the "accepted definition of statehood" which is entirely western and hypocritical. Think about the Quebecois, The Basque, Scots, Kurds and all the other independence movements. Do you care about them? If not, then as yourself why you care about Tibet. If you do, then well, good luck.
5. Ahh, the zombie vassal strategy. Yes you are entirely correct, except it is not just a "few bucks", it is grabbing an entire nation worth of natural resources without getting your hands dirty. What you notice about these governments is that they are not only corrupt and undemocratic, but that they are failing. China gives them infusions of aid and assistance while keeping a hand on the tap to make sure they do exactly as they are told. The reason China makes no attempt to really help them is because they worse they are, the more they depend on China. Yes this is evil,in fact its dastardly evil, but however it is awesome, and the world makes an exception for awesome evil.
6. Depends what you read. My position is that the government does more things right than wrong, and they are given credit for a lot more wrong than they deserve. This one I will leave for later. (Hint: you can make specific accusations for specific cases but don't ask people why they are evil)
7. Have you bothered to read some of Goobi's other posts, maybe it was in the other forum but it said something about how everything that goes wrong in China is blamed on the government. You say The Chinese Government behave like a greedy American Corporation, ever consider that China has greedy corporations of its own? Ever realise that communism is over and private enterprise is now king? If there is a fault with the government over ip then it is to do with failure to enforce and regulate and lack of IP laws. Enforcement is a difficult task as well as the prospect of stamping out the livelihoods of millions of citizens who feed their families with "piracy". People are arrested and fined en-masse but you don't read about them because there are too many to be newsworthy, the people they arrest are piss-poor and have nothing, so why would you know about them? The domestic film and recording industries suffer, so that is why they now find different business models to make money of music and film. Bogus or dangerous products and medicine is an entirely different matter from ip. It is a matter of manufacturers cutting costs without regard for lives, capitalism at its finest. As it goes, you get what you pay for.
As for the allegation that the government hoardes a vast amount of money, I would question your sources. What do you think drives the current high growth? About, corruption, my father used to joke that corruption is our heritage. Now I see he wasn't joking.
On another note, the recent earthquake has caused whole school to collapse brying 400 students. 100 made it out alive. Inspection shows that no steel reinforcements were cast into the concrete when the school was built. Painful reminders show us how far we still have to go.

hello, uh, i seriously don't think that ALL countries should actually turn into a country where everyone should have the balls to change their governments. I'm from Indonesia and here we usually see everyone rioting for even the most pathetic reasons and i totally hate it. When a governor gets elected in a province the people that voted for the opposing candidate starts rioting and burn the place up. If the opposite candidate gets elected the other side riots. It's a hellish circle here. this goes for other things the government wants to do to try to improve the country. nobody just has the balls to give it a try so they go against the government and the government cant do jack S***.
uh. sorry for going off topic, but that just gave a WTF moment.

ProfCS101, you sound as if you're fresh of the field from Yorktown, to have the nerve to lecture a nation on their cowardice for fighting for something you simply don't like. Truth is, you didn't fight for the freedom you live in today, nor did most Americans alive today. You were simply lucky to be born there, and those you hold in contempt are unlucky to be born in places you don't understand. What did the Americans do after winning their independence? They had a civil war and killed 1,030,000 of their own countrymen. Yet I wont hold that against you and take it as evidence that the USA is an evil violent nation.

So can your vaunted CIA and DHS, many Americans seem pretty proud of the fact that they so efficient in making people disappear. Just hope that you are not too patriotic for your own good.
In the spirit of competition I declare that the USA is not as free nor as safe as my country. Here, we have parliamentary democracy, more than two parties to vote for and no terrorists ever. This is New Zealand, we don't hate people and people don't hate us.

no sorry the world does not work this way, Plato. ideals aren't "good" or "bad", they're just ideals.



and no it doesn't. protip: there are more variables in the existence of a state than just waving a stupid flag around. such things as "economic success" or "quality of life" or "governmental stability".

i'd also like to know where you come up with the whole "slaughtering tens of millions" thing because I'm pretty sure you just pulled that out of thin air.

It hurts to be this obvious but really... doesn't acceptance of the latter immediatly sterilize the former?

Nequa said:



The earthquake is dominating news here right now. Even the olympics and the torch relay has disappeared. At work, in car, at home - we are watching the tv and the radio.

It is hard to express the feelings. At the start, it was just weird and confusing. For about 5 seconds, I felt dizzy and I thought I saw all the buildings outside moving and the floor changing like I was drunk. Then the building alarms don't stop to go wooo wooo wooo and everyone starts to scream. The whole building races down the stairs because the lifts don't work. When we are downstairs, everyone seems okay. We sent many phone calls and messages to each other and friends - and in Beijing there was no real damage. So then everyone is happy. I was even laughing thinking it was quite exciting.

Then we begin to hear of the damage in Szechuan and Wenchuan in particular. It sounds bad. Wen JieBao, our Premier, rushed to the site and gave an inspection and met with the people there. He's had a tough beginning of the year I think - it was not long ago he was rushing all over the country talking about the snow storms. Now he is doing the same but with an earthquake.

For the first two days, there were dangerous but hopeful images on the media. Pictures of destroyed buildings, schools, hospitals. But lots of pictures of brave fireman lifting children out of rubble or soldiers throwing food parcels to people trapped underground, or people with blood but saying they are ok. It was a bad situation, especially with the terrible rain that comes after the earthquake, but at least people were being rescued. There were many hopeful messages, celebrities donating money, candle guards and praying of citizens to wish the victims hope.

Now it is three days later. The pictures are not so hopeful. We are beginning to see pictures of people coming out who are not moving. The blogs are coming with comments of people seeing the dead bags on the street. Then we see that the cars can not deliver food to the worst places because the roads are all destroyed. So the army needs to send helicopters and planes.

And there are stories of the school swimming competition being cancelled because half the team is dead. Or the kindergarden with all the children buried. Or the hospital with babies just born but the parents have died. At first there was a number of 7000. But every hour the number goes higher.

It is a very sad feeling now. And a bit helpless.


ProfCS101 said:



ubernaught said:



ProfCS101, I can not find a good translation for the word 'proselytizing'. From the context, I presume it means 'defending the lies of a government' - but since it is an important word, I want to be sure before I respond.

Ubernaught, I also can not properly translate 'sterilize'. It seems to have something to do with curing but I don't think that is your meaning and I don't have enough context to properly understand it.

You know, I kind of hate it when Americans say stuff like this.

First of all, it's simply not true. How many other western democracies have abandoned habeas corpus for example? Examining the case of Jose Padilla might be illustrative of just how much freedom American citizens have right now.

Secondly, calling yourself the best at anything--especially such a nebulous concept as "freedom"--is kind of obnoxious, especially when in a forum surrounded by people of other nations.

Every country has their strengths and weaknesses and different ways of doing things, and some people are quite happy to have a little bit less "freedom" if it also means they get things like national healthcare and the like.

In conclusion, Canada #1 suckers!!!1!eleven!!!

Will people get this straight?! China is not communist!   China has huge corporations! The government is trying its best to stop the pollution, but the capitalists who run the companies won't listen because they want more money. I wonder why this sounds so familiar...   Also, if you haven't been to china then yu can shut your ****in' trap about china not being free or whatever, because you have not experienced chinese culture or their attitude towards life in general. It's impossible to explain, but I'd recommend a book called My Country and my People, that was written before the cultural revolution by a chinese english professor. It still applies today, and it manages to both praise and laugh at the chinese people and country at the same time. Honestly, no government propaganda here: I am a Canadian.

wow, people posted while I wrote.
The earthquake was magnitude 7.3, or something like that, just for your info.

I understand, I have the same problem with chinese.
Here, he means the latter will be killing the meaning of the former.


I have something to say to:
It is a purely chinese thing to be able to not do anything about the government. People grumble, yet no-one does anything, and not because you'll get put into jail. It is part of the chinese attitude towards life. Also, will you PLEASE STOP THE STUFF ABOUT AMERICA BEING FREE AND ALL THAT! Honestly, America also has its own CIA, and they can also make you disappear without anyone knowing.
Sorry, I freaked out just now.

Sorry mate, sir Gallant had it right enough.

Sterilize does mean cure. The reason I chose the word in this case was because the term "freedom", by its very definition defies ethical allotment. It is as Ghostwes remarked: nebulous, and thus resists the attempts to be sewn into the banners of the scared and angry.