Last week, China announced it had gotten a firm grip on video game addiction and believed to have it under control.

Big news anywhere in the world but especially in China, where the bizarre story of a 26-year-old man dying from 15 days of non-stop gaming bounced through gamer forums for weeks. Before that, a South Korean man perished following cardiac arrest said to have resulted from 50 continuous hours of gaming.

Game Guy understands the compulsion; he has lost big chunks of whole days while wandering deep through virtual worlds, much to the chagrin of his wife, who has begun calling video gaming his “mistress.” (One time, GG was late to his own birthday party because of excessive indulgence and the inability to even check his watch.)

She might be supportive then of China’s efforts to clamp down on overuse. According to Xinhuanet.com, that nation’s Youth Social Service Center reports gaming addiction among people 18 and under has dropped 7 percent between 2007 and 2008.

Amazing. But how was this done?

State-sanctioned curbs for online gaming.

Those curbs, Xinhuanet says, include gaming operators restricting teens to a maximum of three hours’ play per day. If teens persist, they lose half their accumulated gaming credits. Playing a maximum of five hours costs them all their credits.

That’s pretty much the same thing as the state reaching into your wallet, pulling out cash and saying, “Thanks.” Except the wallet is still in your back pocket, and some official-looking dude is pulling off your pants to get it.

Nice idea, this gaming crackdown? You think? The thing is, China scored this success because all teens are required to register for online gaming under their real names, ages and addresses, so authorities can verify the information with parents. The parents help out further by monitoring their children’s game playing, in part so Junior doesn’t try using mom’s or dad’s identification to wrangle more gaming time.

In this country, child care and social service advocates, and people who have lost family members to gaming, have urged repeatedly that parents should try getting to know their children’s gaming activities better and watching what games kids buy from stores. A more engaged parent is a more responsible parent, they say.

Now, imagine the state or federal government stepping in to do half, or most, of that job.

Simply put, we can’t. We believe the laws for the land of the free and home of the brave spread wide enough to ensure what we think is our God-given right to surf the Internet any time, anywhere, without fear of Big Brother-like intervention. That includes surfing under assumed names — so our friends and family don’t stumble over our porn trails.

In fact, spyware makers routinely pry into our lives online, but we don’t like to think much about that. And when we do, we pretty much expect the government to have our backs and put the screws to those guys.

But for the government to really, really protect us, it needs complete control — of our computers, of the Internet, of just about everything. By a show of hands, who among you is willing to give up your surfing freedom for that kind of protection?