Steam has been banned in China

I'm personally opposed to the idea of visiting certain countries, such as China and North Korea, to 'see for yourself', especially when you don't know the language, when you're not willing to risk your life to understand and uncover the parts the government doesn't want you to see, like VICE did in Xinjiang: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7AYyUqrMuQ

That being said, if you go then please try to walk into a random hotel/apartment you see on the street to try to book a room.. then you'll discover that 9/10 hotels/apartments won't allow foreigners to live there. I lived in China for more than a year before I realized this was the case, and I have on multiple occasions even been kicked out of friends/partners apartment because someone told the landlord there was a foreigner in the building (or maybe they saw through the surveillance camera).

As other posts have said, the GFW isn’t just a whole heap of blocked IPs. There’s some of that (Google, FB, etc.), but a lot more of it is DPI and other inspection techniques that also have the effect of slowing overseas data to a crawl. In that sense it is quite sophisticated.

I remember getting 300KB/sec at the best of times to overseas sites. VPNs didn’t really make a difference for speed (I believe I had poor routing on top of that), but I could use WG and SS to maintain access to blocked content for weeks on end.

The end result is that internet users are corralled into domestic services where the CCP can flex its power. If anything overseas continues to be too anti-government then it cops a more concrete block.

As also mentioned, the educated class might get VPN access but Joe Bloggs on the street won’t know how to. Also, it’s hard to get a VPN from within China, but once set up with one you can relatively easily keep using it.

I think visiting and seeing the country for yourself is a good idea. I have a lot of experience with the country (lived there, keep in contact with many friends from there, consume a lot of TV and podcasts from there), and the picture of it usually painted by Hacker News comments is completely different from what I've experienced. I usually avoid the topic here, though, because heterodox opinions often are met with hostility or accusations of being propaganda.

In general, when it comes to other countries, I think visiting them when possible and talking with the people there when you can is often eye-opening and can reveal personal biases you didn't realize you had. To give another example, speaking with people from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc made me realize that many of the assumptions I had (adopted from the traditional "common sense" American narrative) were overly simplistic or just plain wrong.

IME the Great Firewall doesn't outright block global traffic apart from some selected services, but makes them so unreliable and slow that it's almost impossible to directly connect and use services from the other side (think 'analog modem speed'), companies (maybe just IT companies, not sure) can get an exemption (they need to connect to github after all), but even then it's not very reliable.

If Steam had a working 'global service' then it almost certainly used local datacenters as proxy. But AFAIK PC gaming is pretty much seen as a niche for computer nerds though (apart from E-Sports), gaming mostly happens on mobile phones.

It is indeed a country full of contradictions.

I was there in 2016, and besides the usual, like Google, Netflix, Facebook or Twitter, most western sites seemed to work, just very, very slow for some reason.

Also, some high end hotels did provide unfettered access to the Internet for some reason, so I guess anyone could go there and browse Facebook for the price of an expensive coffee.

It’s not true that chinese don’t has “access to global internet”. Many sites are blocked (including most top sites), but still it’s a blacklist instead of a whitelist

I have been studying Mandarin and reading about China for years. I suspect that China is so big and diverse that the average Chinese person cannot speak generally about China. I wouldn’t expect someone who has only lived in Alabama to be able to describe America generally. Yet we fall into that trap often with other cultures.

I don't know who "we all" is who has the impression that China doesn't have access to the global internet. There must be thousands of people on this website alone who have either lived in China in the past or still do now who regularly comment and show that not to be the case. There are plenty of articles in the mainstream western media that discuss exactly how censorship and surveillance works in the country.

Steam is one of the few popular international services that escaped getting blocked by the Great Firewall, despite hosting content that the Chinese government ostensibly considers illegal or inappropriate. There have been a lot of articles about how Chinese indie game developers were using Steam as a loophole to sell their games without getting the official government approval to sell games inside China. It's never been clear why Steam was an exception to the blocks, but that's par for the course. The government never explains to the people why something gets blocked, sites just suddenly stop working from one day to the next and the people are expected to accept it and move on.

The internet blocks are set up by the internet providers in the country, so somebody must know what's going on, but - like many things that happen in China - the people just need to guess the reasoning by reading between the lines of impenetrable Party literature or relying on supposedly independent editorials in the tabloid newspapers.

So nobody knows for sure, but people have deduced that there are several reasons that the government blocks websites. One is as a "punishment" for a foreign company, because that company published content that insulted or offended some officials in the government. Another is if the foreign company is specifically and deliberately producing content aimed at Chinese-speakers that discusses topics the Chinese government does not want Chinese people to discuss freely (June 4/Tiananmen massacre, Hong Kong autonomy, alternative governing models that do not include the the Party at the core etc). Another one might be if the foreign company refuses to allow the Chinese government to install their surveillance hooks. But I think perhaps more relevant to the case of Steam is economic protectionism - the Chinese government tends to block foreign services that could compete with Chinese companies, so that Chinese companies can become dominant in the space.

The thing with Steam is that there wasn't really a local alternative with a wide enough catalog of games that it would please the middle class/educated/moneyed gamer in the country, so that's probably why Steam was quietly allowed to continue for so long. A few years ago Valve announced a partnership with Perfect World (local media company) to produce a Chinese version of Steam, but for whatever reason it took ages to come out. Now that it is out, and presumably up and running (I don't know since I don't live in China any more), the government has no incentive to allow people to buy from the international version, so that is probably why it now got blocked.

As usual, Chinese government only block in one direction - every day, every month, every year there are more and more things blocked. Eventually even though technically people in China are still able to visit most of the internet outside of China, the sites that are the most popular in China will all be owned by Chinese companies (or partnerships) and exist completely inside the monitoring and self-censorship bubble of the Chinese cultural sphere. So it's not like people in China don't have the opportunity to see other content, it's just that those other sources are very far outside the mainstream and not frequently accessed by the average person. If it did become popular, that's when the government would make a move.

There's a small minority of college educated youth that speak english and are able to use VPNs to bypass GFW.

I was in China for about a month, up until a couple weeks before the covid outbreak started. The internet was so locked down I could hardly do anything. Thankfully I had set up my laptop and home server with Wireguard, so I was able to route everything through my home server back in the US. Interestingly, the factory I was in had a room with a "special" connection to the internet, which apparently wasn't nearly as locked down (but probably monitored heavily). This was so they could do things like video calls with businesses outside the country. I don't know if this is representative of China in general, but it was certainly oppressive.

> Really makes you want to visit and see how this actually works for yourself. The more I read about China, the more unbelievably contradictive it gets.

It’s not really weird: most Chinese prefer the best choices possible, and if it isn’t blocked (and often even it is) they will use the service if t has more than a watered down local version. The government blocks internet global services via the great firewall because otherwise they would get used in China (and also makes jumping the wall annoying because otherwise more people would jump it).

I have been there more then once. Most of the web outside of China is blocked. The government actively blocks VPNs and any long lived connections (more then a few minutes) that cannot be identified is dropped. Not sure why that is so hard to understand.

There’s no contradiction if you understand that all those bans are on companies, not users. People just use VPN, like they did anyway, but for companies it means they have to comply with Chinese law to make money there.

Who would think that China doesn’t have internet?? They aren’t North Korea. Even Cuba where it’s literally banned has internet.

You should be sceptical of all the news about China that come from the West.

> You have to work 9-9-6. Which is why many citizens are lying flat (not working/pursuing marriage)

None of the government/public workers are working that schedule. Or someone who finds a job in the private companies who aren't insane.

> You are constantly subjugated to random mass covid testing, standing hours outside in the cold.

Speaking from anecdotal experience, my parent has been subjugated to none in 2021 because they were not living in an affected location. Mass covid testing are only carried out where there are outbreaks.

> You are constantly watched, monitored, "invited" to police station for tea, banned for posts that contain any words that are on the growing banned list

Might apply to your personal case? I don't know even one person who are constantly invited to police station for tea, despite having hundreds of friends in China.

> You cannot watch Spiderman, BTS, squid game, porn and many many more things legally

Except that everyone does, and I'm not aware of any prosecutions. Also, Spiderman, BTS, squid game does not even touch laws, they just haven't been screened in cinemas, you can still get them from different sources (which often means piracy in China).

> Oh and there's the yearly flood + shoddy buildings + crashing economy + crashing real estate + aging workforce + factory jobs leaving + dictatorship

We'll see then. The rhetoric have been around for decades.

Some of what you said is true to a degree, but you are painting it in a very biased fashion. China has a lot of flaws, but what you said certainly does not apply to an 'average' Chinese citizen. In fact, all of these combined are almost impossible to happen to a single Chinese citizen, average or not.

This is the second time I've seen you try to piggyback off of a top HN comment without saying anything relevant to it.

Why you are posting the exact comment repeatedly? I saw this twice the past week in China related posts

> West's psychological struggles to come to terms with its own historically unprecedented imperial past, than it does about China itself.

oh come on. we criticise China because it’s whole political system, that was set up very recently btw, fights against basic rights we take for granted in the West. not because of what the romans or european empires did hundreds of years ago, but because of what China is doing right now.

That's very interesting. So you think generally the news of vast human rights abuse we see coming out of China are due to the West's psychological struggles (?), and not due to actual suffering caused by the Chinese government?

Do you have any Chinese heritage in your family? This reminds me of the perspective most of my half-Chinese friends had from back in college. They always felt as if it was their duty to defend China from the biased Western media, despite all the real world evidence painting a very clear and unbiased picture.

What does criticism of authoritarian censorship today have to do with imperialism? Sounds just like an attempt to muddy the waters tbh

Neville Chamberlain had similar thoughts about Germany.

Perhaps when dictators start doing things like rounding up undesirables into camps and pushing ideological uniformity at the point of a gun the reasonable response is to condemn the behavior? It doesn't matter who's wearing the jackboots, it's despicable to appease, condone, or enable the ones stepping on the throats of human beings.

Have you ever spent time in China? If you had, I suspect you wouldn’t be writing this comment.

It's curious that you say 'historically unprecedented imperial past' - imperialism typically has to do with having a ruler, and exerting diplomatic or military force to influence other nations.

Why do you say this is historically unprecedented? China has been imperialist since its beginning, and continues its imperialism with Hong Kong, South china sea, Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Myanmar ...

What 'historically unprecedented imperial past' are you referring to that isn't preceded by China's?

Not being OK with the myriad of human rights abuses the Chinese government commits - sometimes "silently" and sometimes very opening and outright proudly - is just because I struggle with my own regions history? What the actual fuck... I have to call your "theory" what it is: stupid and dangerous - and whataboutism on top.

unprecedented? The PRC is still pursuing Imperial Qing claims to this day.

> Not because I'm being paid by the CCP

But you _are_ being paid by the CCP?

Anytime someone says the CCP there is a post saying the west does the same thing. It is tiring since we aren't talking about the west.

We're not discussing the US, we're discussing the latest abuse of power by the CCP. That's where the link goes. Would you like to next make a false equivalence of US prison labor to slave labor in China? Because that's where this goes, every thread.

Submit a link of the US' latest atrocity to HN. A world of tolerance allows and accepts the stories of violence perpetrated by all actors. The reason you are seeing so many related to China is we have some new flagrant human rights abuse happening from the CCP every week, sometimes multiple times a week, that's why you see so many of these stories percolate to the top. Just two days ago, the CCP tore down the statue commemorating the Tiananmen Square massacre in Hong Kong. [1]

This is the screaming of the machine doing its work of control, every day of every week. The memories of them will be inhaled whole and exhaled as dust, a phantom of a thing that never truly existed.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-59764029

Not really. The Iraq war was horrible and unnecessary and I doubt you’ll find too many people here who’ll say otherwise.

But it was the past and it’s settled. China is happening now.

That’s whataboutism. Most liberal democracies didn’t invade anyone recently and have free press and a history of little recent human rights abuse.

It’s possible to criticize China on its own merits without somehow excusing anyone else.

I’d happily pay more for goods from manufacturers saying they avoid China. Hopefully this will be easier and cheaper in coming years.

The most mature way would be to debate their claims with logic, data, sources, etc.

The communist party party has successfully managed to associate love of China with loyalty to the party and government, and criticism of the party with being “anti-Chinese”. So being pro-democracy in Hong Kong is being anti-China, and opposing the ethnic and cultural suppression in Xinjiang is China hating.

My wife is Chinese and we have a Chinese friend here in the UK we have to be careful what we say to. She gets upset if anything critical of the Chinese government comes up, because she “loves China”. We love China too, just not the communist party.

Standard practice anywhere you have... people, most are perfectly reasonable but many are deeply indoctrinated nationalists.

Just a cursory reading of the comments in any topic about China will show you that their western counterparts are alive and kicking here

There are definitely signs of them here. I have another thread that had someone trying to steer my comment into a East vs West argument just for mentioning China. It seems like they are trying to pick fights out of nowhere as if they are getting paid. And if you notice, they come at certain hours like there is suddenly a wave of them all at once.

You can also check the comment history of these people to see if they are outright government trolls or brainwashed university students. Sometimes it is pretty clear.

Can you point me where to sign up to get paid to defend China online?

Always interesting to see what kind of mindblowing absurdities they come up with to defend the horrendous acts against the Uighur people. I also see it in German comment sections at this point.

You missed the part where the USA killed off most of the native population of its western side and drove them off their lands, yes. Different times, but maybe that's just the thing to do to get to superpower status and China's just catching up.

And if you already have an enemy and they’re doing horrible things, don’t look the gift horse in the mouth, tell people about it.

Comparing China’s bad behavior to the bad behavior of the West is a false equivalence on every aspect. It is clear that the West also has (or had) bad behavior, but bringing it up is a form of whataboutism to distract from the much worse behavior happening right now in China.

I though US maintains list of black listed companies

Propaganda does not benifit you. It benifits the state. To think that the state's goals are your own is a symptom of being poisoned by propaganda.

Pretends to benefit you? Example, please?

The Chinese government != the Chinese people. Whenever geopolitics separates artists from their audiences, it’s just sad. It’s in a similar vein of when total war is waged; the governments talk a big game but it’s the common, every day people who suffer.

If you have an axe to grind be advised to make sure it’s targeted at the right people.

> > If that's gone, I'm going to have a hard time not making the CCP my mortal enemy

> Wouldn't be a bad choice, regardless of what happens with Steam.

I can't tell if this is an ideological thing or not. There's a lot of states out there to vehemently dislike. But it's always this creepy strain of cold war torch-bearing that is so many people's pet cause. For the record, I think almost all states are on the exact same level of hateable, as a concept.

Behind every big battle or war there is always a motivation to gain market access. This was true for ww1 and ww2 and I wouldn't be surprised it is true in these legal battles.

Wouldnt be surprised that tencent actually was the key player that pushed epic to open source their unreal engine so that the US can't block the unreal engine code base from being exported to China.

In what way has the Chinese government destroyed Chinese tech. The big tech companies are still there just more regulated. They are also still innovating.

The Chinese government does actually know the difference between real productive forces and the stock market. It would be really weird for a socialist government to not know the theoretic works of Marx, lenin and stalin.

China liberalized a bit under Hu, with the pullbacks liberties only beginning after the 2008 olympics. Xi…as a child of the cultural revolution who seems to have nostalgic feelings for it for some reason, was a huge step back. He is also china’s first leader who is monolingual and skipped most of his college education (having a degree handed to him after the cultural revolution ended). It’s weird.

People forget china’s rollercoaster with liberalization in recent history, with China opening up dramatically in the late 80s before a huge pullback due to Tiananmen Square, there was also a movement in the late 70s that gained a lot of traction before being quashed. The pullback after the 2008 olympics has just lasted longer than the previous ones.

That explains why China decided to propagandize the whole internet.

You know the end is near when ideas of proper morality flow from a government to its citizens, rather than the reverse.

It is amusing. They could have gone on filling the oceans with plastic and using banned CFCs and gamifying life on Earth through Social Credit all while enjoying near total deference from the prevailing virtuegeist of the West. But instead they chose to mess with LGBTQ and all of the sudden they're evil incarnate.

It's not about an amount of caring like liters of water. Even then the things you mention are effects and not causes.

> Major brands (apple, tesla, disney, etc.) are not going to divest from China

Diversification is already happening - 20,000 foreign companies have left China in the last 4 years. Samsung, LG, GoPro, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk6lkW4A7Ec

> China is a big part of their future market

The Unemployed and semi-unemployed might reach 300M+ people in China. Chinese consumer market is slowing down big time - Lost decades just like Japan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk6lkW4A7Ec

I would argue that any single individual is perfectly capable of being unpredictable, so any form of authoritarianism would derive that unpredictability.

This is, fwig, the instability that a republic is meant to fix.

Because trade only really works if there's balance and bilateral rules.

Opening your nation to trade, while the other does not, and does things like subsidize their companies to put yours out of business, is not good.

The US should probably play tit-for-tat and ban an arbitrary Chinese company for every US company banned by China.

That way, China understands at least the repressions.

Of course, that policy might not work, as it would just spiral up into a big 'ban fest', but you get the idea.

Banning games is a funny thing, people like games. People are going to be upset.

When people are playing games, they are not agitating.

When people are bored, they think about things like politics.

We wouldn't be turning into China if we only banned Chinese companies, if we only blacklisted/punished western companies that spread CCP propaganda (nine-dash line, calling Taiwan a province of China, etc).

To quote HN user stale2002: Tit for tat reciprocity is the basis of most modern trade relations.

Because it's an unfair competition.

Yet we are allowing human right abuses? I think we only care about money, that's why we allow this to happen.

Just look at Intel right now, apologizing for not using slave labour...

Not by a large margin, but yes, yes you are, to some extent still.

I just wished you and Europe where as good as your PR, I really and genuinely do

No, that's not it at all.

Trade is a serious issue, it has consequences.

If China banned most US companies, the US would have to ban most Chinese companies.

Does it make it better to make our workers compete with people without rights, healthcare, holidays, sustainable pay? I don't have any problem with China they can ban what they want, I would just desire that this open borders crap would require import only from countries where workers have a compatible standard of living of importing countries

Sic transit gloria mundi.

But why do you need to sell stuff to anyone, once everyone else has shit economy? You can lie back and relax at that point, you're still top of the heap.

Eh these days biggest trade partner for China is ASEAN, it will be much bigger of course if other Asia included. Especially when RCEP become effective.

> To me, China seems to be preparing.

This is a really interesting perspective. If China is trying to masculinize its teenage male population, we could see it engage in conflict as soon as these teenagers grow into adults at their physical prime, 6-8 years from now.

I think it's entirely likely that China will attempt to annex Taiwan within the next 10 years.

I think we will also see China be one of the first countries to engage in large-scale cyberwarfare alongside any physical conflict, e.g. DOS'ing civilian communications.