New Chinese Body to Censor Online Games

China’s government, which has closed approximately 16,000 Internet cafes in the last three months, is forming a committee to review and censor online games before they are released in the country. Recently, two Scandinavian-published games were banned in China. Hearts of Iron and Project IG12: Covert Strike were banned because the first game portrayed Tibet and Manchuria as independent nations, and the second shows a mercenary shooting at Chinese soldiers. The budding committee will censor games based on violence, sex, and misrepresentations of the country, according to China’s Ministry of Culture. In a nation with one of the tightest censorships on media already, human rights advocates fear that further crackdowns on online avenues, including online games and Internet cafes, will inhibit further the spreading of information and international news to Chinese. Information from E-Commerce Times and Voice of America news contributed to this article.