Joining the banned-wagon

What does civil unrest have to do with a virtual card game?

That's the question Blizzard Entertainment tried to find a satisfactory answer to last week, with little luck.

The current protests in Hong Kong are just the latest conflict between the Chinese government and its "special administrative region." Detailing the reasons for the civil unrest would merit a column of its own, but the long of short of it is that this is what you get when you spend 150 years developing a territory based on the ideals of western liberalism and then put it under the control of an increasingly totalitarian government.

This column isn't about the Chinese government's efforts to exert more influence on the people of Hong Kong though. It's about the Chinese government's efforts to exert more influence on us.

Which brings us to Blizzard Entertainment and Ng Wai Chung, otherwise known as the professional "Hearthstone" player, "Blitzchung."

Last week during the Asia-Pacific Grandmasters competition, Blitzchung used his post-match interview to express support for the Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters. The reaction from Blizzard was severe. Blitzchung had his winnings from the tournament forfeited and was banned from competitive "Hearthstone" for a year. They also fired the two broadcasters doing the interview and deleted both the interview and the match itself from their official channels.

To be fair to Blizzard, Blitzchung's outburst was technically in violation of their rules and the company was well within its rights to impose consequences. However, that doesn't mean people have to like it.

Spoiler Alert: They didn't. Blizzard's rush to silence Blitzchung immediately brought the Streisand Effect into play, drawing more attention to it than it ever would have received had they just left it alone. As it turns out American players aren't too keen on Blizzard, a company that literally has a statue outside their office inscribed with "Every Voice Matters," suppressing pro-democratic speech, particularly when it appears to be on the behalf of the Chinese government. Thus, Blizzard has spent the better part of the last week stuck in an impossible situation.

Like much of the American entertainment industry today, Activision-Blizzard has become accustomed to the sweet sweet revenue stream of the Chinese market. However, entry into the Chinese market isn't really about doing business with Chinese consumers as much as it is doing business with the Chinese government. Running afoul of the government, which includes facilitating even the slightest of challenges to their authority, puts companies at risk of getting shut out.

How sensitive is the Chinese government to criticism? Images of Winnie-the-Pooh have been banned in China due to government critics comparing the beloved bear to President Xi Jinping. With billions of yuan on the line, crossing the Chinese government is not high on Blizzard's to-do list. It's easy to see why Blizzard acted so swiftly to cover up the incident while their Chinese counterpart professed their unwavering loyalty to the state on social media.

At the same time, while Blizzard doesn't have to worry much about the American government cracking down on them, they do still have to appease American consumers, many of whom do not appreciate the idea of an American company kowtowing to the whims of a foreign government.

After all, where does it stop?

It's one thing for the Chinese government to censor things going out to its own people. It's another thing entirely when their policies start dictating what the rest of us see and hear.

Taken a flight to Taiwan lately? Probably not since pressure from the Chinese government has caused major American airlines to stop referencing Tawian as a distinct region.

Wanna know why The Ancient One in Marvel Studio's "Doctor Strange" was played by Tilde Swinton instead of an elderly Asian actor? It probably had something to do with Marvel Studios wanting to make sure no association could be made between Swinton's character and the Tibetian monk character it was adapted from.

Winnie-the-Pooh may be banned in just China right now, but how long will it be before Disney starts feeling pressure to shelf the franchise globally? How long until China starts using their market power to erase the global record of other inconvenient realities like Nobel Peace Prize winning activist Liu Xiaobo or the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

There are few things more un-American than government officials running over to media companies demanding consequences for content they deem unfavorable.

Ironically, our dedication to the principals of the First Amendment means that this is not an issue that can be solved by government intervention. American consumers individually have to make their own stand, which is what Blizzard saw last week. Lashback over their ruling on Blitzchung resulted in mass dissent from both customers and employees within the company.

Ultimately, Blizzard walked back their ruling to an extent, returning Blitzchung's winnings and reducing his ban, and the ban of the two shoutcasters, to six months.

Blizzard Entertainment President J. Allen Brack asserted in the walkback that the company's relationship with China had no influence on the initial decision. Maybe he's being truthful today, but the fact remains that the Chinese Government still holds the keys to the market and China's largest tech company, Tencent, owns five percent of Activision Blizzard (along with major stakes in several other major video game companies).

As the situation in Hong Kong becomes more unstable, there will assuredly be more incidents where U.S. companies will be forced to choose between yuan and dollars. "South Park," which amazingly wasn't already banned in China, drew their line in the sand last week with the appropriately named episode "Band in China."

We'll have to see where everybody else falls.

Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and may have just gotten this paper banned in China.