Dunno why I'm wasting my time, but wtf is this article?
It's hardly new in the tech space as Chinese companies like Huawei are regularly cited as selling unsafe hardware which the Chinese government can spy in on.
Huawei literally sold devices with
malware installed that could listen to calls, track users and even make purchases, and then claimed it happened somewhere down the supply chain outside of their control.
Four major anglophone countries (AUS, CAN, NZ, USA) have all declared Huawei telecom products to be security risks, and three of those four have actually banned the products in some regard. It's not like distrust of Chinese corporate ventures is some fringe conspiracy.
Anti-Chinese sentiments have deeper roots in the video game community too, as Chinese players are often associated with industries like gold farming in online MMORPGs like World of WarCraft and hacking. That's not to say hacking and gold farming aren't realities in China, but rather the current climate in politics and entertainment regarding China have been intersecting for some time.
Is it xenophobic when people talk about rampant piracy in Latin/South America or Eastern Europe?
I suppose it can be at times, sure. But in general, no, because it's not just "reality" it's a
normalized behavior for a significant part of the gaming population there. CD Projekt famously started its life as a
literal piracy outlet, selling cracked copies of Western games to Polish gamers, taking advantage of lax copyright laws. Pointing that out is not being "anti-Polish," and trust me, I can give you plenty examples of
actual anti-Polish behavior.
There's a legitimate reason that online communities, like say PUBG, frequently want to have the Chinese users quarantined into their own servers. Because again, cheating and hacking are
normalized behaviors for a significant part of the population in China. Maybe the stories were all bull, but I'm reminded of those stories from a few years ago about Chinese investigators trying to stop Gaokao (college exam) cheating where there were claims such as students/parents rioting while yelling "
We want fairness. There is no fairness if you do not let us cheat."
It's not xenophobic to point out when a society has some kind of issue. A Canadian is not xenophobic for pointing out that China has an issue with cheating or government collaboration. A Belgian is not xenophobic for pointing out that Russia once had (and still has to a very large extent) an issue with software piracy and hacking. An American is not xenophobic for pointing out that Brazil is home to a significant piracy problem.
Now, you
would be xenophobic and racist if you're attributing those piracy issues to some kind of societal moral failing or worse, some pseudo-genetic destiny. But if you're pointing out "Russia has a piracy issue, and by the way it exists because
[insert long political-socioeconomic history since the fall of the tzar here]," then I don't see anything wrong with such an idea.
Even more importantly, in this case, we're dealing with people having an issue with a
corporate entity, not with people at an individual level. It is not "anti-Chinese" sentiment to be anti-PRC or anti-Chinese-corporations-that-collaborate-with-the-PRC.
This kind of claim, associating general bigotry with dislike of governmental policies is like straight out of the goddamn playbook of a certain lobbying group in the USA (
coughAIPACcough).
But to assert that Epic Games is a front for espionage at the behest of the Chinese government has troubling roots, and a poor foundation built on paranoia and xenophobia.
What are the troubling roots? The chain of thought works like this:
Tencent is a major investor in Epic -> Tencent is a known collaborator with a repressive, authoritarian state in the PRC, notably working with them to demo early versions of the Social Credit System -> Therefore anything Tencent has investment into should be treated with caution.
Where is the xenophobia in not wanting to deal with a company that is literally part of China's plans to conduct mass surveillance on a scale no government has ever done before?
I will say, the Tencent issue is largely a red herring that I wish people would stop worrying about. There's currently little proof that Tencent does much to influence the various Western companies it invests into. For once, I think Sterling got the message right today:
I'm less worried about them reporting info directly back to the PRC right now, and more worried about them becoming the tech/gaming equivalent of Disney, buying and owning everything, driving us further towards a dystopian future where a handful of corporations control everything.
