China press criticizes online video games, Tencent falls on the stock market

Visitors to the Tencent Games booth at ChinaJoy, Shanghai, July 30, 2021. REUTERS - ALY SONG

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3 min

Tencent shares fell sharply on Tuesday morning in Hong Kong.

The Chinese video game giant has seen its quotation plummet by more than 10%, following an article in the state press calling online games "

spiritual opium

". 

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With our correspondent in Beijing, 

Stéphane Lagarde

The "

 spiritual opium

" video games

of youth - which is to say the people's new opium - decidedly the editors of the official press in China have been very Maoist in recent times.

"

 No industry, no sport can be allowed to develop in a way that will destroy a generation,

 " says this daily economic news article, which circulated a lot before its abolition.

"Honor of kings," one of Tencent's bestsellers, is cited here as responsible for myopia and school delay, according to the newspaper affiliated with the state agency Xinhua, but in reality, it is t is an entire industry that felt targeted.

See also: China prevents Tencent from merging the two major online gaming groups

These remarks in fact partly echo those of President Xi Jinping last March, who had already pointed to video game addiction as a 

 major “

social problem

” for Chinese youth.

After E-commerce (Alibaba),

VTC

platforms 

(Didi)

, it is therefore the turn of the Chinese online gaming giant to feel the wind of the ball.

Tencent had to announce that it would

reduce access

to its flagship video game to minors.

A more reassuring dispatch from the official agency then came to assert that game developers could not be solely responsible for children's addiction to screens.

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