Chinese media company Global Times is a controversial company. They publish a lot of ridiculous articles, slideshows and videos. They’re prone to making mistakes, particularly when it comes to Japan. Despite all their issues, there is one thing that they’re doing that no other major Chinese news outlet is doing, they’re hosting video games.
On the Global Times Chinese Huanqiu.com’s military section is a browser based flash game called, Defence of the Diaoyu Islands. The gamefalls under the genre of /”Red games”, games that often have very pro-China narratives.
This game comes at a time when Sino-Japanese relations are at an all time low. China and Japan have been vying over a tiny chain of islands called the Diaoyu Island in China and the Senkaku Islands in Japan.
Defence of the Diaoyu Islands takes after pretty much every single screen scrolling shooter from Raiden to Ikaruga. Basically the player takes control of a Chinese “Diaoyu Island” patrol ship for the purpose of defending the Diaoyu Island!
When the game is first loaded, a message is shown explaining China’s “undeniable claim” to the islands. Then after a click the game starts. The game is simple, shoot down Japanese ships and planes to protect the island. Interesting enough, the Chinese ship has very simple weapons, which can be upgraded, while the Japanese ships seem to have lasers and missiles.
Control wise the game is very simple, use the mouse to aim and click to shoot. The arrow keys control movement, left, right, up and down.
When you die, or win (I haven’t been able to win), the screen takes you to a web portal all about the current situation between China and Japan. It is an interesting read for anyone who can read Chinese.
Not much can be said for the music and the graphics but it’s a fun simple game. Take away all anti-Japanese messages and you have a very generic shooter. It’s not exactly worth playing in the sense that it’s a great game, but instead to look at the lengths State media will go to propagate the party line, that the Islands belong to China.
You can check out the game at Huanqiu.com.
Comments
6 responses to “Defence Of The Diaoyu Islands, Chinese Newspaper Style”
Is there going to be Defence of Tibe.. I mean China? But instead of having Ships/tanks/soldiers we have defenseless civilians and monks being the enemies?
the red them looks like red alert 3
it looks almost exactly the same :S
Most likely made by the same developers as Al-Qaeda vs The French Army.
Yet if the right-wingers in Japan made a game like that it would start a riot in China
“This game comes at a time when Sino-Japanese relations are at an all time low.”
I think you’ll find Sino-Japanese relations were at an all time low around 1937 when Japan invaded China.
Or any of the prior raids Japan ran on the mainland prior. There’s a pretty long history of bad blood there, things today are rather positive and peaceful in comparison.