Whore of the Orient comes under political attack, accused of racism

Having already endured a troubled development, KMM’s Whore of the Orient has hit fresh controversy.

The Age reports that Australian City of Monash councillor Jieh-Yung Lo has labelled the game as an attempt to disgrace Chinese culture, history and traditions”, adding that: It’s the use of the word ‘Orient’, more even than the word ‘whore’, that is the issue.

The O-word is very similar to the N-word for African-American communities. It’s a 19th century racial-colonial conception and it’s especially painful for older people in the communities. That was a very bad time in China, and people don’t want or need to have that dragged up.”

The fact that the game’s development has been part state-funded has also irked.

The most shocking revelation is that Team Bondi received $200,000 from Screen New South Wales to develop the project,” Lo stated. Australian institutions should be encouraged to fund projects and initiatives that cultivate mutual understanding and prosperity in the Australia-China relationship. We need to build greater trust and cultural understanding rather than promote division and negativity.”

Lo says he intends to take his complaint to the Human Rights Commission on grounds of racial vilification.

He claims to be seeking to force KMM to retract the title and stop development of the game”.

Screen NSW, which sanctioned the game’s state funding, said that it does not proscribe subject matter to content creators, including titles, but makes its funding decisions based on the creative integrity of a project and the expertise of the funding applicants” and that ‘Whore of the Orient’ is an historical nickname for the city of Shanghai”.