Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
Not quite… it’ll be more a thumb print… The Western influence that many Chinese enjoy? Needs to get stepped down. Hu Jintao, the President of China, said, “”Hostile international powers are strengthening their efforts to Westernize and divide us.” It’s sort of back to the Mao days, but at the same time, Westernization is heavily about making money and many Chinese including Party members are enjoying making the cash. More censors? Maybe, but there’ll be a huge divide. (WSJ – China Iron Fist) This contrasts with another post also in the WSJ. Chinese have bought more British Rolls-Royces in 2011 than the US for the first time. At $245,000 each, it’s a bargain! (WSJ – Rolls Royce)
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Found in a box while cleaning are a collection of Cultural Revolution paper cuts. The collection was originally donated, and put away. There’s plenty of images that you can see in hi-res. It’s inspiring since a lot of this art has become part of the pop culture world. Although Chinese art is popular and these seem like they’d be in high demand, the weird punch line about the set of images are the fact that these would sell for $155 each, “if it finds a serious collector.” That’s all? (UM – Paper Cuts)
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China is a problematic country to those of us in the west, particularly because of the things we read and hear about the policies and actions of the communist government. Cities like Hong Kong, Shanghai and the Special Economic Zones in places like Guangdong Provinceseem pretty wide-open and free, while the rest of the country mostly suffers from the oppressive, bureaucratic grind of the central communist authority in Beijing. So it seems ironic, at least to us, that a video game company in Shanghai would borrow the political and aesthetic themes of Chinese communism to create and promote video games for fun and profit. But that’s just what Shanghai game company Online Technology is doing. Starting at the end of this month, two communist-themed games will be widely available on both the web and on iPad. The web game, “A Spark Can Set the Foreston Fire”, has players battling and conquering enemies by disseminating communist theory. The iPad game, “Red Campaign”, makes the player participate in three battle campaigns set during the Second Sino-Japanese War. And both games, according to the company, were created to celebrate the upcoming 90th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party. Okay, we are all used to video games that glorify violence, but communist politics? It might be fun to check these games out to see how such concepts fit into your gaming comfort zone. (CNNGo – Chinese Communist Video Games) Here is a direct link to the Online Technology website (in Chinese). Links to the communist games are at the bottom.
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