Sacred Symbols+, Episode XI: The Almighty Dollar (Patreon)

With 1.4 billion citizens and counting, China isn't only the world's most populated country, but home to nearly one-in-five human beings anywhere on Earth. It's a political, cultural, and economic powerhouse with a rapidly-increasing standard of living, a widening middle class, and immense pull on the world stage. It also happens to be a one-party communist dictatorship, one that doggedly persecutes religious minorities, manipulates its currency to hurt its trading partners, and actively threatens its territorial neighbors. Now, this may be seem like a random episode of Plus, but it isn't, because drama in, around, and about China's neighbor Hong Kong has unfavorably positioned the gaming industry in an important political fight. Not only is China more ingrained in gaming than you probably think; it also wields more power than you can probably comprehend. (Just ask Activision-Blizzard.) How does China, Chinese money, Chinese consumers, and the Chinese government interact with the western gaming world? How can the whims of Chinese bureaucrats so deeply affect American and European businesses? Will money talk loudest of all? Join us as we do our very best to make sense of a bizarre, fluid, and complex situation that begs one question: Is capitalism truly king?