The Whining, Petty World Of Chinese Nationalist Expansionism

@jonlsullivan Nov 19 The thing we often forget about the CCP is that every sphere is an ideological battlefield. Doesn't matter if its stupid memes online or Katy Perry holding a ROC flag or a Chinese youth team match in German 4th division. Absurd for us, logical for them

One of the online games I play, World of Warships, recently had an encounter with the pettiness of Chinese expansionism. The game is about to release a new set of destroyers, the Pan-Asian line, which groups together ships from Korea, Thailand, the PRC, and the ROC, since none of those nations has enough ships to fill out several lines of a full fledged navy over the games's period from just before WWI to just after WWII.

The new line was initially released with the Republic of China boats flying the Nationalist Flag. The Longjiang, which was ordered from Germany in 1913 for the ROC and designed but never built, thus carries the ROC flag.

Despite the historical reality of the Republic of China being the only China during that period, and the simple reality that ROC ships carried ROC flags in the postwar period, Chinese wumao yammerheads complained to their embassies in Europe, which duly complained to WarGaming, the company that operates World of Warships. WG responded not by censoring the ROC flag, but by removing all the national flags -- including those of Thailand and Korea -- and replacing them with a meaningless generic Pan-Asian flag.

World of Warships has its own Chinese server which is separate from the other servers in Southeast Asia, Europe, North America, and Russia. That server is a separate business from the other World of Warships servers, as it operates under Chinese "law". Chinese players thus cannot see the North American, European, Russian, or Southeast Asian servers unless they are resident in those countries. So the only people affected by which flags the ships carry are people who are... not Chinese.

I am happy to report that this decision was greeted with overwhelming negativity (non-scientific poll of North American server discussion forum). The company was roundly criticized. The Koreans were especially upset since they finally had a ship in the game with its very own Korean flag, which was suddenly whisked from them by Chinese whining. It is possible to use "mods" (add-on programs) which can alter the appearance of the ship, to add the proper flag, but only the player herself can see that.

WarGaming is making the flag customizable, so you can add whatever flag you want. I will certainly be flying the ROC on my ROC navy ships. Giving the middle finger to the whining insecure wumao horde just makes it that much tastier.

This isn't the first time and increasingly, won't be the last, that China attempts to alter historical reality and to insert its politics into every last trivial thing.

China's soft power, hard at work, making friends for the nation everywhere....
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