Communist Party: The youth of China are healed, they have been knocked out of gaming addiction

In 2018, the Chinese Communist Party declared gaming to be the “digital opium” from which young people must be protected. Otherwise they’ll damage their eyes. Harsh restrictions on gaming have been imposed. Four years later, the gaming association reports that the problem is “as good as solved.” The government now seems to like gaming again.

It was like this in China for a long time: For years, PC and mobile gaming in China grew like crazy. The Tencent group (League of Legends) in particular became huge, earned billions and bought all over the West.

China sees gaming as “digital opium”

That was the turning point: In August 2018, the Chinese Communist Party turned its powerful “Sauron Eye” on gaming. Games were dressed up as “digital opium”.

“Opium” is so demonized in China because opium addiction at times completely paralyzed the once glorious country in the 19th century. Millions of people were addicted to the drug. Economy and society collapsed.

It was found that far too many young Chinese would suffer from myopia. The state apparatus believed that this was because the children were addicted to video games and were breaking their eyes on mobile devices because they gambled like crazy.

They drew the vision of a gaming-addicted, weak youth. That wouldn’t work at all.

It was recommended:

Parents should minimize the use of electronic devices when they are with their children.

It should be over in 15 minutes. The children should rather go out and play outside.

Hardly any games have been allowed in China in recent years:

Strict time limit for under 18s

How was this implemented? In November 2019 came strict rules:

• Young people under 18 were only allowed to play for 1.5 hours on work stretchers.
• They were allowed to play for 3 hours on weekends and public holidays.
• Video games were generally forbidden between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m.

To enforce this, it was made mandatory for gamers to identify themselves via face scan if they wanted to play a video game.

China also cracked down on video games, blocking important licenses, simply preventing games from appearing in the first place, and severely restricting gaming.

“Problem solved in principle” – 70% of young people hardly play or not at all

This is the situation now: As PC Gamer reports, a gaming association in China has now released a report saying the problem of gambling addiction among Chinese youth has been “basically solved.”

Statistics from China showed that 70% of underage people now gamble less than 3 hours a week.

A pro-government newspaper also published an article that China can no longer afford to ignore video games when Europe and the US are bringing so much economic, technological, cultural and even strategic value to them.

It sounds like there’s concern that games like Call of Duty might give the American military an advantage.

So it sounds like the bad times for video games in China are over. Markets are also taking a deep breath, with Tencent stock up 33.42% over the past month.

In the last 3 years, the climate for gamers in China has been quite harsh:

China bans the global version of Steam – The ban came on Christmas Eve