A Game Designer in Beijing Bought Toy Guns. China Imprisoned Him.
The New York Times
San Cheng bought toy guns online as props for video game design. Then the police arrived, and he was jailed under China’s strict but messy gun laws.
When the police swarmed into San Cheng’s apartment in Beijing late at night and accused him of illegally buying guns, he was sure it was a mix-up.
True, he had bought dozens of toy guns on Taobao, the Alibaba shopping site, as props for his business designing shoot-em-up games for smartphones. But the seemingly harmless replicas were so cheap and easily purchased, Mr. Cheng said, that he thought owning them could not be a crime.
He was wrong. Mr. Cheng, 47, a Taiwanese American game designer, ended up spending three years in detention and prison. In detention, he said, he met 20 or so other men who had also been arrested in a police sweep against buying replica guns online.
