Advertisement
Chinese newspaper labels gaming ‘spiritual opium’ and calls out Tencent, fanning fears of a crackdown
- The report from Xinhua-affiliated Economic Information Daily marks a strong attack on the country’s gaming industry and its leading player
- However, the piece shows few signs that it represents the government’s official stance
Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
2
A newspaper affiliated with China’s official news agency, Xinhua, has published a report calling online gaming “spiritual opium” that is harming the country’s teenagers and singled out Tencent Holdings, China’s largest video game operator, as a source of the problem.
Advertisement
The piece, published on Tuesday in the investigation section of the Economic Information Daily, marks a strong attack on the country’s gaming industry and its leading player. Coming amid Beijing’s ongoing discipline of China’s Big Tech, the report is fanning speculation that gaming could be the next target following private education. Tencent, which relies on gaming for nearly a third of its revenue, lost over 10 per cent in the morning session in Hong Kong.
In a March speech to representatives of the country’s health care and education sectors, Chinese President Xi Jinping commented on gaming and said addiction to video games is a concern for the psychological health of the youth, Xinhua reported then. Off-campus tutoring, which Xi had called a “social problem” in the same speech, was soon crushed.
The Economic Information Daily report, based on the newspaper’s survey of students at a junior middle school in Sichuan province, shows few signs that it represents the government’s official stance. Previous investigations by the Beijing-based newspaper were wide-ranging from local waterway congestion to wasteful packaging with few stories on the technology sector.
The tone of the story is also at odds with a speech delivered by a Chinese gaming regulator at the ChinaJoy gaming expo in Shanghai last week. Yang Fang, a deputy director of China’s propaganda department’s publishing bureau, which is in charge of issuing licences to video games, said the Chinese government hopes the industry can promote Chinese culture and soft power abroad.
“Online games combine sound, light, and digital techniques with arts and literature. They incorporate various artistic elements such as music, fine art and literature,” Yang said in her speech published on ChinaJoy’s website. “Many people call online games the ‘ninth form of art’.”
Advertisement