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LEGO’s efforts to tap into the Chinese market with the LEGO Cube game has been met with backlash and derision from political activists, among others.
LEGO has made an effort to tap into the Chinese market by releasing LEGO Cube exclusively in China. Those efforts have been met with backlash from both fans and political activists.
The backlash has been most visible on social media, where LEGO’s post about LEGO Cube have been met with derision by activists and other internet users, many of which posted images featuring LEGO recreations of infamous photos capturing some of the Chinese Communist Party-ruled government’s human rights atrocities. These include the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the 2019 Hong Kong protests and the inhumane treatment of Xinjiang’s Uyghur population.
One of the most common photos referenced appears to be the shot of Uyghurs sat in uniform in a facility believed to be one of numerous re-education camps around Xinjiang, also referred to as East Turkestan. The photo was posted to social media by the Chinese government and has been circulating since 2017. Worth noting is the fact that multiple nations, including the United States, Canada and The Netherlands, have recognized China’s actions against the Uyghur population as genocide.
Other images posted on social media recreate scenes from the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. The movement began in 2014 with a series of peaceful protests that saw the conception of the Umbrella Movement– a moniker that stemmed from the prevalence of umbrellas used by those participating in the sit-ins to protect against the sun. Umbrellas were also used during the 2019 protests to protect against the excessive amounts of tear gas and other weapons used by police. The movement resulted in the national security law, which criminalized the activities and ideology that comprised the pro-democracy movement through vaguely defined terms and wide application.
The Chinese Communist Party and its actions across East Asia have come into focus and have led to greater scrutiny with regard to business dealings concerning Chinese companies, such as Tencent, which collaborated with LEGO for LEGO Cube. This is partly due to the fact that major private businesses in China are often pressured into including CCP members on their boards and that continued willingness to deal with the state contribute to the Chinese governments human rights violations. This includes businesses across a number of different industries, from fashion to film.
Exemplifying the tight hold that the CCP maintains on businesses in the country, LEGO Games’ Ronny Scherer explained in an interview, “In order to release a game with a foreign brand in China, you need to acquire two different kinds of permits… One is an ISBN license that’s akin to an ISBN license in the west for releases of books. The second part is a publishing license. You need to be a Chinese-owned entity in order to apply for and receive those permits.” This suggests that LEGO has had to apply for the necessary permits through Chinese-owned companies.
Source: Twitter, Brick Fanatics
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