How I noticed this parallel:

For years I have been driving down Airport Blvd in Orlando and noticed a sign that read Foreign Trade Zone. I thought nothing of it as it was by an international airport and one of the largest buildings there was a building with the Mitsubishi logo.

I worked in China for a couple of years. They have "Special Economic Zones" with gates and guards. All this means is that foreign companies are corralled into these areas so that it is easier to get things done within the Chinese bureacracy. ( BTW: China calls itself "Communist" but the reality is that they have gone back to the old Emporer System that they had prior to 1911-which is when Sun Yat Sen officially overthrew the Manchu dynasty.)

The Chinese have been purchasing US debt for years with us having no way to pay that debt back under the present system.

The other day a person sent me a link to an article about how the Chinese and US gov'ts have made a (quiet) deal where the Chinese would receive large tracts of land (50 sq. mi. was mentioned in the article as the grant in one location) for "Special Economic Zones" or "Foreign Trade Zones". However, unlike the SEZs in China, these would be autonomous enclaves that would not be subject to US law but Chinese law and would only be staffed by Chinese workers who would live on the base or FTZ. They would then manufacture even cheaper copies of pirated Bethesda Softworks games (just joking...sort of...)

Now...I don't know if the writer of the article had 100% of his statements verified but I did check a link that was sent at the same time (http://ia.ita.doc.gov/ftzpage/letters/ftzlist-map.html) and there it was; FTZ 42, Orlando 1 Airport Blvd.

I had always thought that the gameuniverse's premise was a bit far fetched but now...maybe not so farfetched...anyway, just thought it was interesting.

We can't talk about real life politics. Also I don't see how that is parallel to Fallout at all. America in Fallout would never work with China. International trade pretty much stopped. They would never have made such a deal with China in the Fallout Universe.

If that is a true artical, it pretty much means Chine can flood the country with thousands of spys using those "Special Economic Zones." Maybe that is how it parallels the games, at least point lookout but it still isn't the same.

NO politics

Wow, well I will try to explain...
In the Fallout Universe: China needs to expand for various stated and unstated reasons that fall into the categories of economic pressures, political justification and resource scarcity.

In the Real World: China does not have large amounts of oil or metals (this not a politcal statement; one can look it up in something called an encyclopedia). They have also been having trouble with droughts and low crop yields. China has a huge, exponentially expanding population (they are trying desparately to bring it under control but...). There ARE political, sociological and ethnic (not racial, we are all the human race) differences. Ex: Chinese girls who like Occidentals, specifically "Americans" are disdainfully referred to as "bananas". Now, one of the items that I noticed in the article was a reference to an SEZ in Idaho in which the Chinese workers would all live in the SEZ, work in the SEZ and (by inference, I assume) not be "tainted" by going out into the general population to learn about those radical, dangerous ideas that a few of those US citizens seem to harbor such as private ownership of weapons...

China is also very nationalistic. Chinese movies are about on par with the Hollywood movies of the 50s which is one of the things that the Fallout universe is lampooning. I found it somewhat disconcerting from a sociological standpoint to see Occidental actors in Chinese made movies being portrayed in the same fashion that "nonWhite" characters were portrayed in the 50's war movies (they are very big on war movies and movies about their dynasties) it was also rather humorous.

On another but related note; in the area that I was in, the gov't seemed to be obsessed with increasing the amount of land mass that made up China. There are real plans that are being acted upon to fill in areas of the South China Sea. One REAL goal is to fill in the sea all of the way to Hong Kong. Also, many of the Chinese people that I was acquainted with, spoke quite seriously about colonizing the moon/Mars.

So yes...there are parallels

Only in the sense that China needs natural resources and wants to expand. Pretty much every county wants and needs natural resources and expand economically. So I still don't get your point.

Your story original post was about America being in debt and selling land to China. They did not do that in Fallout. Fallout lore tells us China controlled most of South East Asia. China and USA were trying to find the last oil on earth.

The only real parallel with Fallout China and the real world would be Japan during WW2. Their oil was cut off and they were running out of resources. So they invaded other nations to get those resouces, including oil and attacked America in an attempt to give them enough time to do what they needed to do without American military intervention. I think they were hoping for at least a year to do what ever they wanted. China running out of oil and resources invaded Alaska.

Getting to much into real world things so I am going to leave it at that. From the artical you posted which is about real world politics, does not really match anything like that in Fallout IMO.

Like Styles, I'm not drawing any sort of specifically Fallout related parallels with your post. :shrug:

Frankly, the only thing I can discern is the connection with an expanding China in need of resources. Nothing new really, and certainly nothing characteristic of Fallout alone. There are a couple apocalyptic scenarios that begin with a Chinese invasion of neighboring countries for resources in the event of a global depletion of these resources (for whatever reason, climate change is one scenario given as an example).



Sounds exactly like one of those bogus emails I get from time to time telling me to be worried about "Chinese taking over America" or my rights being infringed upon by some made-up bill being currently passed through Congress. :rolleyes:

In fact, a quick google search turned up this information:



Looks like they are subject to U.S. law and heavily regulated to me. :wink_smile:

Also, like others have said, this isn't a topic for the forums.