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Excerpt: Chinese go online to torture, kill corrupt officials
AFP
Thursday, August 2, 2007
An online game in which players can torture and kill corrupt officials that a Chinese local government set up to teach people about the perils of graft is proving a roaring success, state media said Thursday.
"Incorruptible Fighter", developed by the government of east China's Zhejiang province, was launched just over a week ago and is already so popular that it is being redesigned to accommodate more players, the China Daily said.
"I feel a great sense of achievement when I punish lots of evil officials," one gamer surnamed Sun was quoted as saying.
The game, which lets players get ahead by killing officials by means of "weapons, magic or torture," has been downloaded more than 100,000 times, the Southern Metropolitan Daily said.
The different game scenarios are based on well-known incidents taken from Chinese history, but the parallels in modern China of people struggling against seemingly insurmountable corruption are clear.
In order to advance to a new level, the player must enter into an "Anti-Corruption College" to be lectured in more detail about ancient cases, the Southeast Business newspaper said.
Along the way Internet vigilantes are rewarded for the capture, torture and killing of not just corrupt officials, but also their sons and daughters.
Once the player has punished enough corrupt officials, graduating through successive layers of vice, he or she enters into a graft-free paradise.
"We want game players to have fun but also to learn about fighting corruption, folklore and history," said Qiu Yi, a local official in Ningbo, one of Zhejiang's most prosperous cities.
Some experts have questioned, however, if the game is targetted at the right people.
"Government officials should be the ones getting anti-corruption education, not local youngsters," Peking University professor Wang Xiongjun told the China Daily.
Corruption is a source of immense and growing anger among ordinary Chinese.
President Hu Jintao has identified corruption within the Communist Party as one the greatest threats to its legitimacy as rulers of the country, and the government regularly authorises the real-life killing of people for graft.
The former head of China's food and drug watchdog, Zheng Xiaoyu, was executed last month for corruption, with his killing hailed by the state-run press as a warning to other corrupt party members.
http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Chinese_go_online_to_torture_kill_c_080220
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"The Greatest Enemy of Knowledge is Not Ignorance, It is the ILLUSION of Knowledge. Stephen Hawking"
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