What the Western Press Doesn’t Get about China and Video Games
Contrary to popular opinion, most of the world is not the United States
I understand — you see a headline that’s something like “Regulators in China Ban Minors From Online Gaming More Than 3 Hours Per Week” and you have to say something. It just calls to you, doesn’t it? My various feeds have been lighting up with articles about this, both hard journalism from sources like the Guardian and Reuters and opinion writing from the usual crop of bloggers and talking heads.
None of these articles I’ve read are wrong, at least not in a strict factual sense, but they often miss the plot. So many of them start with the assumption that they can infer the behaviors and dynamics of Chinese families and youths from what they know about people in the US and UK. You really can’t, though — people in this country aren’t just Americans in Chinese wrappers.
I can’t claim to be an expert here, but I have lived in China for a while and I’ve written a little bit about this particular subject.
