Fri, Aug 04, 2023 page8

• Beware of Chinese video games

  • By Wu Cheng-yin 吳政穎
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  The market for China’s video game industry has become quite competitive in recent years. Meanwhile, Beijing has tightened its gaming regulations, leading to consumers losing interest. As a result, China’s video game companies have been investing in overseas markets, including Taiwan’s.

  For a long time, China-invested mobile games have topped the ranking charts in Taiwan. In other words, Chinese companies are hugely profiting from Taiwanese. For example, the mobile game Demon Legends developed by China’s Haikou Fengli Network Technology Co was released in traditional Chinese on July 21 for iOS. Since then, it has topped the App Store in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.

  However, it is almost entirely based on the Japanese manga Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba and the publisher never officially authorized it, Japan-based news media Gamebiz said.

  Taiwan is the fifth-largest market for mobile games in the world, but more than 40 percent of profit here belongs to Chinese companies. Taiwanese even contributed to that Chinese company involved in copyright infringement.

  Taiwan should focus more on how China-invested mobile games are invading Taiwan. Some working in the industry believe that consuming Chinese mobile games is not so much different from sponsoring the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. In fact, the two real problems with Chinese games are information security and censorship.

  Last year, US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said that Tencent Holdings Ltd could identify the location of US troops through video games. Moreover, both mobile and computer games could help China collect user data, and built-in programs might pose a threat to network and information security, said US think tank the Center for a New American Security said.

  In the past, if overseas gaming companies wanted to enter Taiwan’s market, they had to collaborate with local corporations.

  However, today Chinese companies have started services across national borders, with much smaller companies established to address legal and administrative matters. That is, they no longer need a local agent to help them set up game content, servers or customer service making it much harder for the government to protect users’ personal information.

  In Taiwan, regulations on Chinese games are far from strict, and the current system is incapable of preventing these companies from encroaching on the market. China-funded companies must be investigated more thoroughly, especially when they operate across national borders.

  Taiwan should also monitor the collection, flow and storage of unauthorized data, which might hurt information security.

  If needed, the Personal Data Protection Act (個人資料保護法) should also be revised and carried out more seriously to confront the encroachment of Chinese companies.

  In terms of censorship, although international versions of Chinese games are often released, they are not entirely free from China’s censorship system. For instance, Taiwanese and American players of Genshin Impact, a popular mobile game developed by China’s miHoYo, said that their accounts had been locked due to their use of some “sensitive terms,” and they found it difficult to retrieve their accounts through the nations’ consumer protection mechanisms. This way, international users would gradually and unknowingly become much more attentive to whether what they say is in line with China’s standards of censorship. Their self-censorship would work in tandem with China’s “grand external propaganda.” Consequently, values of democracy and freedom would be endangered.

  Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Keelung Councilor Lu Mei-ling’s (呂美玲) remarks that Taiwanese “are asking for a beating,” is a perfect example of how self-censorship affected by China would put national security in jeopardy. For Taiwan, which is directly under China’s threat, confronting the censorship embedded within their video games is a battle of values to which Taiwanese should not be indifferent.

  In addition to those video games, Chinese apps such as TikTok and Xiaohongshu (also known as Little Red Book) have already created a series of problems in Taiwanese society.

  The government and the Legislative Yuan should be more proactive, and Taiwanese should be aware that China’s integration of entertainment and politics can severely damage their free and democratic society.

  India has already banned Chinese apps and video games. It might not be easy for Taiwan to follow suit, but precisely because Taiwanese have options, they should act of their own volition and say no to China-funded games. There are numerous kinds of entertainment for them to choose from — why would they play those video games that have often been accused of plagiarism and that are posing a threat to information security and national safety?

  Wu Cheng-yin is a software engineer.

  Translated by Emma Liu
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