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Comment by ct520 | Hacker News Reader

What’s interesting is watching video game streaming in China. When playing games a few times then poking around a little more. I was extremly shocked at how mainstream cheating and stealing is embedded in... ugh I dunno for lack of better words, their current culture? When and how did this become a thing?

Let me clarify I’m pretty naïve on anything China. And not trying to say everyone over there lacks integrity (thought the opposite) but seems like lack of integrity was like trendy from what I could tell?

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I don't know when it became a thing, but it's a well known fact in all gaming communities that the Chinese are responsible for the vast majority of cheaters. If you region-lock the game, cheating becomes a much smaller problem.

Maybe a person who has lived in China or is Chinese could shed more light on why they want to cheat in the first place?

> I’m pretty naïve on anything China

It's a helpful attitude. Other countries really do things differently than the US.

From what what I've read in newspapers, talking to recent immigrants and travelling for years in Asia:

1) Both China and India consider cheating on school tests to be a necessary thing to get the highest possible score. Riots occur when school physical security or test questions are changed. So it's baked into academics from a young age.

India arrests hundreds over Bihar school cheating

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-31998343

A Q and A about cheating among Chinese students

https://www.davisenterprise.com/local-news/ucd/a-q-and-a-abo...

Riot after Chinese teachers try to stop pupils cheating

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/101323...

2) In the case of China, invention originality is not a goal - results are.

3) Art copies are not seen as inferior because they have the same appearance:

https://aeon.co/essays/why-in-china-and-japan-a-copy-is-just...

4) Ideas around what democracy mean in other countries are often different than the Western model.

In Indonesia, candidates pay voters $2 to $5 per head (vote buying) and guarantee they will be repaid after they win. If they don't win, the candidates go into hiding for a while to avoid the repayments.

In China, there's Xi, dictator for life.

> In Indonesia, candidates pay voters $2 to $5 per head (vote buying)

no democracy can exist without first spilling blood for it imho.

They spilled some.

At least 3 Indonesian airports are named after heros of the revolution KIA against their Dutch colonizers. (IIRC a single DC-3 was shot down, killing most of those.)

Halim Perdanakusuma in Jakarta is one of those airports.

Indonesia finally got its independence after WW2 when the USA told the Dutch not to return. Indonesia is a close friend of the US government until today, doing most of their military pilot training in the US, NTSB investigation training, and of course periodic internal purges using US intelligence.

Aside from corona, Indonesia is doing very well in terms of having a popular and well-regarded general as President, and prospering. Jakarta is a beautiful capital today, and its traffic is tolerable. (They implemented a busway system with reserved lanes, which is heavily used by commuters, and a new light rail system is going online around this time.)

Bali is not doing so well, as peak tourism is tough on locals, with insufficient electrical production, and agricultural-use water diverted to the tourist areas like Kuta - in at least one area, they can no longer grow rice.

This is so interesting. Something to read about over the weekend. Thanks!

patio11 has a good collection of "working in Japan" anecdotes on HN also that match my experience there.

I see the same thing in Chinese webnovels. The victims of any scam get blamed for falling for it and the scammer is considered the intelligent one, though sometimes only until they themselves get scammed in turn. Basically, honesty isn't seen as a virtue, instead there's a sort of tit-for-tat mentality of returning evil for evil and good for good.

i highly suspect this is due to the massive population and the intense competition to survive and rise thru the ranks under such an environment.

> extremly shocked

I’m a little disappointed how words loose meaning over time. People are extremely shocked watching video games. And there are no words to express their feelings when, for example, their dog hit by a car? Because barely anything can be more shocking than extremely shocking.

Could you elaborate more and provide some examples? Personally I didn’t find any known streamers approved of cheating, and the mainstream absolute hate cheaters.

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