Contemporary research on media violence has shown the importance of examining the violent presentation of American video games and the correlation between games and the current U.S. game rating system. However, not many studies in this field have been conducted in China, especially regarding the importance of its pending official game rating system which has caused much controversy nationwide. In an effort to seek academic evidence for developing China's official game rating system, this study examined and compared the violence in fourteen of the most popular American and Chinese electronic games in 2004.These fourteen Chinese games and American games were selected for content analysis of the quantity and context of game violent interactions. The percentage breakdown of PATs (violent interactions) was coded by rate per minute, as was perpetrator characteristic, target characteristic, weapon used and visual perspective.The goal of the study was to determine if the popular Chinese electronic games carry as much violence as do popular American games, and if the context of violence in the former is significantly different from that in the latter. The American games were used as a basis for comparison to Chinese games for this study.The results of the study showed that popular Chinese games featured as much violence as American games. However, their context of violence was significantly different in terms of perpetrator characteristic, weapon used and visual perspective.Based on the results, the researcher concluded that China would definitely need a game rating system. However, the significant difference in the context of violence suggested that the Chinese rating system does not necessarily have to be the same as the U.S. system. / Department of Telecommunications