China Arrests 20 for writing slash fiction

[dyre]

90% of the government is meritocratic/technocratic...only 10% are "princelings"...most advance through the ranks based on merit...

Pfft, but 100% of them are corrupt as hell and getting rich off the public dollar...don't tell me no one's getting kickbacks from all those lucrative government contracts!

maybe...but its still better than getting "kickbacks from all those lucrative government contracts" and being shit at their job...

in China they worry about growth dropping "into single figures"...here in the UK we cheer about 0.7%...but then we have baron with 2:1 in modern history in charge of our economy, whos only previous job was folding towels and putting them on shelves at Selfridges...

That's a bad comparison. China is a developing country that is still in the process of meeting its full potential; the UK is already developed and its growth will naturally slow down.

India has about 5% GDP growth per annum, much higher than the UK...but surely you wouldn't say India is well-governed!

When the government curbs corruption, reforms the pension system, and makes the air breathable in Beijing and Shanghai again, I'll give it my full congratulations, but in the meantime they're no better than the assholes we have in Congress.

 

[jetriot]

20 people is...well it's not very much...especially in China...

It's not the number it's the fact it was done at all. If the Chinese government killed someone because they wore green would it be ok because it was only one person?

there are 1.34 billion people in China.

i am merely relating the scale to the chance such "people be fucked up bro" stories will arise.

like i said before, a number that small makes me think this is possibly the work of a fairly limited number of public officials.

and there are plenty similar stories from...other places...even those you might consider "free"...

im in the UK and could quite easily be arrested and put on "the sex offenders register" for visiting the any of the most popular and mainstream porn sites on the internet depending on what i look at.

like tomorrow.

and the best bit is i dont even really know what im not supposed to look at ...because that's decided by a committee of unelected "do gooders" and the details aren't public...hell, it could be "small tits" for all i know...and that's the goddam UK...but wait...wanna talk about crazy southern US judges/legistaltors ?..how about Texas making masterbation illegal ? [http://tribuneherald.net/2013/06/26/texas-legislature-fails-on-abortion-passes-masturbation-bill/]...

sure its all "terrible".

but let's not get carried away...

our shit stinks just the same.

You sound relatively sane so I thought I'd point out nicely that no state or city in the US would ever get away with outlawing masturbation. Your article is just poor satire. I know the pro-choice crowd wants to make pro-lifers look like insane Bible-crazed puritans but take it from this atheist pro-lifer that most of just aren't comfortable with the idea of killing babies...

 

[jetriot]

In America it isn't really the job of the Federal Government to 'build' anything. Their primary role is defense even though they have led projects such as highways, monuments, parks, water, irrigation, etc. That said they do provide funding to states, cities, counties etc. who are closer to the communities and better able to build infrastructure and what not. That can include basic infrastructure or museums, airports, schools, etc.... Not really sure what you mean by haven't built anything since the 70s or if thats just a 'fuck America' jab in which case don't look at me I am Canadian.....


I'm not.

 

[dyre]

nah that was aimed at dyre as he mentioned "Congress".

anyway its a little of topic but its my assertion that a nation is only historically "great" during the period it feels confident enough to undertake "great works" and build for the future.

the whole asian pacific rim (not just China) is building citys like somthing outta Buck Rodgers while people in (now predominately "neo-liberal" right wing) English speaking countries are letting the fabric of society rot way around them for the fear of losing what they have...and what they have actually aint even all that "great" any more...except in their heads...

No offense, but I've found that rhetoric about "greatness" of a nation is a silly distraction from real concerns like standard of living, education standards, pubic safety, civil liberties, etc.

I understand that the whole "greatness" thing may hold weight in a nationalistic sense, especially to a nation that regarded itself as the center of civilization, only to be humiliated and cut up into spheres of influence by the imperialist powers. But it's a sideshow, a way to distract people from thinking about the things they should be expecting from government.

And if you call those massive spending products (aka lots of graft money for the officials) in China that artificially promote economic activity a sign of "greatness," I'm not sure what to tell you. Some friends of mine in Shanghai used to joke about how the government pays for someone to build a house, then pays for someone to knock it down, then pays for someone to build it back up, and an official pockets some "gifts" from the contractors every step of the way. That's not greatness...it's just corruption. It's the same shit we have in the states, except with useless buildings instead of F-35s.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Making slash fiction a crime is good enough for me.

 

[Scarim Coral]

That's the first time I had heard of slash as an alternative word for yaoi. I thought slash was like violent/ gore related friction which I would of somewhat understand for the arrest.
So I take it they got poor internet protection or curious kids/ teens to look up at that fanfic for an justify arrest on those writers?

 

[likalaruku]

This will also include Yuri & furries, as the Chinse government wants porn abolished. All it's going to do is make sex crimes skyrocket because no one will have a safe outlet, especially since most Chinese men can expect to die alone because there aren't enough women to go around.

Yaoi is my preferred type of porn, so I don't care for this news at all. Not long ago, a Canadian guy got a year in prison for owning lolicon manga, & Australia banned women with small breasts from being in porn.

Know what else is apparently illegal in China? Books/movies/TV series about time travel & reincarnation.

Speaking of overbearing governments that laugh in the face of human rights & are pants-shitting sociopathic babies who think they're the only adults in the whole country, I wonder what North Korea thinks of CollegeHumor.

 

[Victim of Progress]

I have to applaud the Chinese government on that one. Now if they would also enforce it on any other kind of terrible fiction writing and enforce it all around the world, the internet would become a much better place.

 

[Lieju]

"The Chinese" don't generally share the latent societal revulsion at "teh gay" that we have to deal with mainly because their underlying philosophical belief system doesn't have the same roots...much like the Japanese tbh...

Not based on some Chinese homosexuals I have spoken to. I don't know how common it is but the few I have met really didn't want their parents to know because they'd disown them or worse.

It might be more that it's something you just don't talk about, and hide, but still.

From what I know of the situation in Japan, it's friendlier towards homosexuals in some aspects than let's say certain parts of the US (and homosexuals aren't used as political scapegoats), but for example lesbianism is considered to be 'just a phase' or something that's a result of the failed past relationships and something that can be cured with just finding the right man.

 

[Nickolai77]

20 people in China didn't know about VPN's.

Of course, this is patently ridiculous but conservative minded Chinese are likely to see slash fiction as deviant/immoral/deprived and the law in this case is going to reflect that attitude. The Chinese government, as it strives to control information across Chinese society, does see itself as a "moral guardian" of the people, hence why it bans pornography online among other things.

 

[Nokturos]

That'll teach 'em for making Sonic go down on Bowser.

 

[Alterego-X]

How unsubtle.

Here in the west, those stories could have been quitely disappeared based on copyright claims and C&D letters, and no one goes to jail as long as they obey those. All hail free speech and creative freedom.

 

[Queen Michael]

That's just horrible.

Unless they were shipping L/Light, but if not then this is just horrible.

 

[Someone Depressing]

Oh, China, trying to clamp down on people's fetish for homosexuals.

When will the world learn? Honestly, unless they were shipping that weird gorny-shit, I don't see the problem here.

 

[TakerFoxx]

That's the first time I had heard of slash as an alternative word for yaoi. I thought slash was like violent/ gore related friction which I would of somewhat understand for the arrest.
So I take it they got poor internet protection or curious kids/ teens to look up at that fanfic for an justify arrest on those writers?

Nah. Slash just refers to the "/" that's put between the names of the pairing, like "Kirk/Spock." Not sure why it only to homosexual pairings though, as hetero ones use it too. Anyway, the gore stuff is usually referred to as "guro."

Why do I know these things...?

 

[viscomica]

We're talking about a country that banned media that mentions time travel because they don't want to promote anything that would encourage people to re-write history. I am not surprised.

I reckon there aren't many chinese fans of Doctor Who, then.

 

[MXRom]

We're talking about a country that banned media that mentions time travel because they don't want to promote anything that would encourage people to re-write history. I am not surprised.

I reckon there aren't many chinese fans of Doctor Who, then.

Oh there are plenty of fans of Doctor Who. Just none of them mention it IRL.