The Battle Of Hong Kong

‘Magic: The Gathering’ Pro Shows Support For Hong Kong Protests During Broadcast
By Matt Perez

Lee Shi Tian at "Magic: The Gathering" Mythic Championship V.
Topline: In what now can be considered a contrarian move for major American companies, Wizards of the Coast has seemingly allowed pro player Lee Shi Tian to show solidarity to Hong Kong protesters during its broadcast of the Magic: The Gathering Mythic Championship V.
As Tian walked on stage at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, California, he donned a red scarf over his face and covered one of his eyes, both symbols of support for the Hong Kong pro-Democracy protests.
During a post-match interview where Tian took the win to break into the tournament's top 8, Tian said, "Life has been very tough in my hometown, in Hong Kong. ... It feels so good to play as a free man."
The broadcast did not cut away and there has thus far not been any action against Tian for the demonstration.
Tian told Polygon he was inspired by the actions of Chung “blitzchung” Ng Wai, who was suspended and temporarily stripped of prize winnings by game company Activision Blizzard for comments made supporting Hong Kong protests during a broadcasted Hearthstone competition this month.
According to Polygon, Tian pulled a similar move in 2014 during the Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour, where he played a deck named “Umbrella Revolution,” a reference to the protests in Hong Kong over electoral reform at the time.
Forbes has reached out for comment.

Key background: Major companies from the NBA to Apple have been criticized for curtailing criticism of China in response to the threat of losing the country's business. 

Fans of Activision Blizzard have been calling for a boycott of their games like Hearthstone and the upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare due to the suspensions of “blitzchung,” and three college players who held up a sign that said “Free Hong Kong, Boycott Blizz.” 

Last Friday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers, including Marco Rubio and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, signed a letter addressed to Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick criticizing the company’s actions. 

For Wizards of the Coast, its parent company, Hasbro, has steadily decreased its manufacturing in China to avoid the crush of impending Trump tariffs against the country.

Crucial quote: From the joint letter to Kotick: “Because your company is such a pillar of the gaming industry, your disappointing decision could have a chilling effect on gamers who seek to use their platform to promote human rights and basic freedoms.”

What to watch for: How other game companies—especially those with large markets in China—react to players showing solidarity with Hong Kong protesters.

Money Cult: The Long List of Beijing's Ass Kissers

Here's a list of companies kowtowing to China’s despots

It's not just Blizzard... there is a massive list of companies bowing to Chinese money
By Anthony Garreffa

I'm sure by now you've heard about the massive issues going on in China, which have been going on for a very, very long time now - but we're at a point where it's hard to ignore, even for gamers.
Activision Blizzard is in the crosshairs of Chinese censorship, with the Overwatch, Diablo, and World of Warcraft creator bowing to Chinese pressure. Activision Blizzard recently suspended one of its pro Hearthstone players after the player support pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
But the list is growing, wtih Apple taking a knee to Chinese censorship and even the likes of American Airlines, Gap, Mercedes-Benz, Ray-Ban, Nike, TikTok, and many others pressured by the country and its strict stance on criticism. Mashable has compiled a big list of these companies that include (so far, as I'm sure there are more):

1. Activision Blizzard 
2. American Airlines 
3. Apple 
4. Audi 
5. Cathay Pacific 
6. Coach 
7. Disney/ESPN 
8. Delta Airlines 
9. Gap 
10. Marriott International 
11. Medtronic 
12. Mercedes-Benz 
13. Muji 
14. NBA 
15. Nike 
16. Ray-Ban 
17. Swarovski 
18. Tiffany & Co 
19. Vans 
20. Versace 
21. Viacom/Paramount Pictures 
22. Zara
    Boycott them all, if youcan.

U.S. Moral Bankruptcy

Dealing With China Isn’t Worth the Moral Cost

We thought economic growth and technology would liberate China. Instead, it corrupted us.

By Farhad Manjoo

The N.B.A. store in Beijing.

The People’s Republic of China is the largest, most powerful and most brutal totalitarian state in the world. 

It denies basic human rights to all of its 1.4 billion citizens. 

There is no freedom of speech, thought, assembly, religion, movement or any semblance of political liberty in China. 

Under Xi Jinping, “president for life,” the Communist Party of China has built the most technologically sophisticated repression machine the world has ever seen. 

In East Turkestan, in Western China, the government is using technology to mount a cultural genocide against the Muslim Uighur minority that is even more total than the one it carried out in Tibet. 

More than a million people are being held in concentration camps in East Turkestan, two million more are in forced “re-education,” and everyone else is invasively surveilled via ubiquitous cameras, artificial intelligence and other high-tech means.
None of this is a secret. 

Under Xi, China has grown markedly more Orwellian; not only is it stamping its heel more firmly on its own citizens, but it is also exporting its digital shackles to authoritarians the world over. 

Yet unlike the way we once talked about pariah nations — say East Germany or North Korea or apartheid South Africa — American and European lawmakers, Western media and the world’s largest corporations rarely treat China as what it plainly is: a growing and existential threat to human freedom across the world.
Why do we give China a pass? 

In a word: capitalism. 

Because for 40 years, the West’s relationship with China has been governed by a strategic error the dimensions of which are only now coming into horrific view.
A parade of American presidents on the left and the right argued that by cultivating China as a market — hastening its economic growth and technological sophistication while bringing our own companies a billion new workers and customers — we would inevitably loosen the regime’s hold on its people. 

Even Donald Trump, who made bashing China a theme of his campaign, sees the country mainly through the lens of markets. 

He’ll eagerly prosecute a pointless trade war against China, but when it comes to the millions in Hong Kong who are protesting China’s creeping despotism over their territory, Trump prefers to stay mum.
Well, funny thing: It turns out the West’s entire political theory about China has been spectacularly wrong. 

China has engineered ferocious economic growth in the past half century, lifting hundreds of millions of its citizens out of poverty. 

But China’s growth did not come at any cost to the regime’s political chokehold.
A darker truth is now dawning on the world: China’s economic miracle hasn’t just failed to liberate Chinese people. 

It is also now routinely corrupting the rest of us outside of China.
This was the theme of the N.B.A.’s hasty and embarrassing apology this week after Daryl Morey, the Houston Rockets’ general manager, tweeted — and quickly deleted — a message in support of Hong Kong’s protesters. 

After an outcry from American lawmakers, Adam Silver, the N.B.A.’s commissioner, later seemed to backtrack on his genuflection.
But I wasn’t comforted. 

The N.B.A. is far from the first American institution to accede to China’s limits on liberty. 

Hollywood, large tech companies and a variety of consumer brands — from Delta to Zara — have been more than willing to play ball. 

The submission is spreading: This week the American video game company Blizzard suspended a player for calling for the liberation of Hong Kong in a live-stream. 

And ESPN — a network owned by Disney, which has worked closely with the Chinese government on some big deals in China — warned anchors against discussing Chinese politics in talking about the Rockets controversy.
This sort of corporate capitulation is hardly surprising. 

For Western companies, China is simply too big and too rich a market to ignore, let alone to pressure or to police. 

If the first and most important cost of doing business in China is the surgical extraction of a C.E.O.’s spine, many businesses are only too happy to provide the stretcher and the scalpel.
But it will only get worse from here, and we are fools to play this game. 

There is a school of thought that says America should not think of China as an enemy. 

With its far larger population, China’s economy will inevitably come to eclipse ours, but that is hardly a mortal threat. 

In climate change, the world faces a huge collective-action problem that will require global cooperation. 

According to this view, treating China like an adversary will only frustrate our own long-term goals.
But this perspective leaves out the threat that greater economic and technological integration with China poses to everyone outside of China. 

It ignores the ever-steeper capitulation that China requires of its vassals. 

And it overlooks the most important new factor in the Chinese regime’s longevity: the seductive efficiency that technology offers to effect a breathtaking new level of control over its population.
There was a time when Westerners believed that the internet would be the Communist regime’s ruin. In a speech in 2000 urging Congress to normalize trade relations with China, Bill Clinton famously quipped: “There’s no question China has been trying to crack down on the internet. Good luck! That’s sort of like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.” 

The crowd of foreign policy experts erupted in knowing laughter.

China proved them wrong. 

It didn’t just find a way to nail Jell-O; it became a Jell-O master carpenter. 

Through online surveillance, facial recognition, artificial intelligence and the propagandistic gold mine of social media, China has mobilized a set of tools that allow it to invisibly, routinely repress its citizens and shape political opinion by manipulating their feelings and grievances on just about any controversy.
This set of skills horrifies me. 

China may not be exporting its political ideology, but through lavish spending and trade, it is expanding its influence across the planet. 

There is a risk that China’s success becomes a kind of template for the world. 

In the coming decades, instead of democracy — which you may have noticed is not having such a hot run on either side of the Atlantic — Chinese-style tech-abetted surveillance authoritarianism could become a template for how much of the world works.
I should say there were a couple of small reasons for optimism regarding the spread of Chinese tyranny. 

The Last Hope

The bipartisan outrage over the N.B.A.’s initial apology to China did suggest American lawmakers aren’t willing to give China a completely free pass. 

The Trump administration also did something clever, placing eight Chinese surveillance technology companies and several police departments on a blacklist forbidding them from trading with American companies.
But if we are to have any hope of countering China’s dictatorial apparatus, we’ll need a smarter and more sustained effort from our leaders. 

I’m not holding my breath.

American Greed: Activision Blizzard is acting as Chinese censor

Activision Blizzard punished a pro player for speaking out on behalf of Hong Kong. It must be boycotted.

By Zack Beauchamp

Blitzchung, the Hong Kong based player at the center of the Blizzard controversy.

Activision Blizzard, one of America’s biggest gaming companies, just bowed to Chinese censorship in a disturbing way: suspending a professional player of Hearthstone, its digital card game, over a statement supporting the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests.
The offending commentary from Chung Ng Wai, a Hong Kong-based player who goes by the name “Blitzchung,” came during an official interview on Sunday held after he won a match in the Hearthstone Grandmasters tournament, the highest level of competition in the game.
Chung said “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our time” — a protest slogan in the city — while wearing goggles and a face mask, items commonly donned by protestors to conceal their identity. 

The protests, which began over an extradition law, have morphed into a broad-based demand to protect the semi-autonomous city’s democratic political system from mainland China’s attempts to exert control over it.
On Tuesday, Blizzard came down hard on Chung. 

In an official statement on Hearthstone’s blog, the company announced that it would be suspending Chung for a year, forcing him to forfeit thousands of dollars in prize money from 2019 and firing the casters (commentators) who conducted the interview.
This is a big deal.
Blizzard, who created (among other things) World of Warcraft, is a massive company. 

It brought in about $7.5 billion in revenue in 2018. 

Like the NBA, which has rebuked the Houston Rockets’ general manager over a pro-Hong Kong tweet, Blizzard is not merely trying to operate within the confines of Chinese censorship but acting as its agent.
The non-Chinese Hearthstone player base is furious with Blizzard; the game’s subreddit is full of longtime players vowing to quit the game in protest. 

Count me as one of them.
I’ve been playing Hearthstone daily for about two years, including spending some money on cards and reaching the top tier of the game’s competitive ladder (the Legend ranks). 

But now I’m done, both with Hearthstone and any other Activision Blizzard product, unless it reinstates Chung and the casters.

The case for boycotting Blizzard — and other US companies who act as Chinese censors
Blizzard’s argument for suspending Chung hinges on an alleged rule violation, specifically Section 6.1 of the official Hearthstone Grandmasters rules. 

The rule prohibits “engaging in any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image.”
The idea here seems to be that supporting pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong has brought Chung into “public disrepute” in mainland China, justifying his suspension. 

The actual motivation is most likely crasser: Blizzard’s userbase is declining, and it is counting on expansion in the very large Chinese market to reverse the downward momentum.
“The gaming giant ... is badly in need of a stimulus after its market value declined by a quarter over the past twelve months,” the financial news company AlphaStreet reported in January. 

“Blizzard’s strategy of taking the China route for regaining the lost strength is currently followed by many American tech companies.”
Blizzard’s userbase remains overwhelmingly non-Chinese. 

According to the company’s most recent financial data, from June 2019, the entire Asia-Pacific region makes up a scant 12 percent of its revenue. 

Since that region includes large gaming markets in places like Japan and South Korea, mainland China’s clout is smaller than you think — and pales in comparison to the Americas (55 percent) and Europe/the Middle East (33 percent).
So while Blizzard may have a lot of ground to gain in the Chinese market, a significant hit to its revenue in the United States and other liberal democracies would be a massive threat. 

Blizzard’s fans in those countries have a lot of leverage over the company.
And, in this case, they’re justified in using it.
Navigating the Chinese market is difficult for major companies and requires some necessary tradeoffs. 

Blizzard has changed the art in World of Warcraft to comply with Chinese cultural norms and strictures, notably cutting out some goriness and skeletons. 

That’s maybe not ideal, but at least a defensible choice for a company that has a clear financial stake in the Chinese market.
Censoring a professional player for expressing support for the democracy movement in Hong Kong — and seizing his money — is way over the line.
It isn’t merely adjusting a cosmetic part of the product to fit a particular market; it’s actively participating in the suppression of political speech on behalf of core liberal values. 

Blizzard is throwing its lot in with an authoritarian state, acting as an international agent of its repressive apparatus in opposition to fundamental human rights.
An organized boycott targeting Blizzard is also a relatively rare opportunity for ordinary citizens around the world to help out the Hong Kong protestors working to protect their democratic system.
It’s hard to do much for the brave people taking to the streets from thousands of miles away, but international consumers do have leverage over international corporations. 

Punishing Blizzard for its behavior could help send a signal to other companies that acting as agents of the Chinese state carries a cost and that they need to think carefully before throwing Hong Kong under the bus.
Blizzard’s censorship of Chung is hardly the only case of a US company acting on behalf of China. Just yesterday, the NBA issued a statement distancing itself from Daryl Morey, the general manager of the Houston Rockets, after he tweeted support for the Hong Kong protestors. 

The team is reportedly considering firing him in order to placate Chinese authorities and protect NBA investments there.
The league is facing a bipartisan political backlash as a result; Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and several Democratic presidential candidates have condemned the league’s actions.
But Blizzard, less well known among the American political class, isn’t facing the same amount of high-level political condemnation. 

For now, it seems it’s up to Blizzard’s users to show the company that its actions have consequences.