China also has some unique ineffective areas. One example I ran into a little while ago was that China has essentially a review board that approves video games to be distributed to the Chinese market. A particular political backdoor to expedite the approval process was exposed, which quickly lead to an extreme backup of the approval queue as the party clamped down on that backdoor and made the entire video game industry wait several months to a year for them to get their ducks back in a row.
Additionally, if you want to publish in China, it is advisable (although I don't think strictly required... yet...) that you provide some way to block any messages in your game that the party disapproves of. For some sorts of games, this is basically untenable.
Essentially, China is effective where its policy of iron-handed top-down dictatorship is effective. It is less effective at bottom-up development, except insofar as that bottom-up development is done with the express intent of being a tool of the iron hand (but the iron hand's whims can change, so that presents a moving target).
I suspect what we'll see over the next hundred-or-so years is that the iron-handed approach is effective while it has intelligent leadership (and though I disagree with China's politics, I'll concede they're making strong strategic decisions). Inevitably, though, every empire has stupid emperors and we'll probably see China stumble when its turn comes.
Additionally, if you want to publish in China, it is advisable (although I don't think strictly required... yet...) that you provide some way to block any messages in your game that the party disapproves of. For some sorts of games, this is basically untenable.
Essentially, China is effective where its policy of iron-handed top-down dictatorship is effective. It is less effective at bottom-up development, except insofar as that bottom-up development is done with the express intent of being a tool of the iron hand (but the iron hand's whims can change, so that presents a moving target).
I suspect what we'll see over the next hundred-or-so years is that the iron-handed approach is effective while it has intelligent leadership (and though I disagree with China's politics, I'll concede they're making strong strategic decisions). Inevitably, though, every empire has stupid emperors and we'll probably see China stumble when its turn comes.