On December 22, 2023, China announced yet more rules to govern the gaming industry. Having already prevented the import of foreign-made consoles from 2000 to 2014 and restricted the amount of time that under 18s could play games to just one hour on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays in 2021, it has now floated the idea to ban rewards for daily gaming, consecutive in-game payments and expenditure during first-time plays. A stock-market selling stampede ensued.
In some ways, these measures are validated by health and addiction concerns. Since 2019, the World Health Organization has recognized a medical condition called Gaming Disorder, which is characterized by “impaired control over gaming” and prioritization of the activity so that it “takes precedence over other interests” and deteriorates functioning in other spheres of life.
Addiction and myopia
In China, a survey-based study published last year found 7.36% of students who play games in junior or high school to have the disorder. Hong Kong University estimated that, at elementary school, nearly 10% are at risk in its city, a proportion that reaches even higher for boys.
Myopia is another demon at the door. Although there has been some debate about the relationship between gaming and nearsightedness, many optometrists see it as a risk factor, along with time spent indoors, and China has rates of 80% for the condition in the 16 to 18 age category.
As a result, although restrictions on freedom of expression render robust conclusions impossible, public sentiment seems to be genuinely aligned with Chinese authorities’ attempts to grapple with gaming. It has carte blanche to proceed, even with unusual approval for some of its measures from overseas. That said, the country has already declared victory over gaming addiction in minors over a year ago, and state media even spoke positively, if cautiously, of video game development recently.
Controlling the influencers
So why is it now testing the waters for another clampdown? In short, health is not the only matter that troubles the Chinese Communist Party about gaming, and moves against it are situated amid a wider new strike against all forms of entertainment it dislikes: a sweep-up of short videos on broad and tenuous grounds like their offense to public aesthetics and a campaign against online “rumors,” particularly from celebrities. In other words, China is anxious about who is influencing whom and how they are doing so.
December’s new gaming rules underlined a ban on any content that endangers national unity, national security or China’s interests and reputation, too. They will require all data processing and storage related to games to be situated under Beijing’s jurisdiction. These reflect fundamentally authoritarian motivations that go beyond the wellbeing of citizens.
As with any meeting space where it does not feel total control, from mosques to Hong Kong bookstores, the Chinese Communist Party is likely to view with suspicion the framework that online gaming provides for people to communicate and form groups, especially since videogame culture has grown so massive in China. Authorities have a general tendency in such situations to squeeze forums to a narrow scope, whereby the information flow can be curated and monitored. There is no reason why gaming would be an exception.
Indeed, by nudging people away from the activity or restricting their choices, Beijing can funnel them towards pastimes that are more party-guided and better in line with Xi Jinping thought. And by keeping video games companies on a short leash, it can ensure that they self-censor games for anything that may be objectionable to communist values. No blowing up Shanghai or fictionally fighting the People’s Liberation Army, for instance.
A proven avenue to pluralism of thought
Here, gaming has a recent history that frightens China. Protesters in Hong Kong are thought to have taken some tactics such as the positioning of medical and other resources on the streets during marches and other anti-government actions into the physical world from computer games. Other team strategies dating back to the Umbrella Movement of 2014 may have formed in the digital space of survival games before translating to the bricks, mortar, flesh and blood of the metropolis, too.
In return, pro-democracy activists certainly brought the message of their discontent in the opposite direction, from the physical to the virtual, enabling their call for basic rights to reach a global audience either via the platforms of existing games like Animal Crossing or through the creation of entirely new titles for others to play such as Liberate Hong Kong.
Some games, like Riot: Civil Unrest, constituted both study material for protesters and a repository where they still face off with Hong Kong police to this very day; others are still awaiting release and could therefore bring new attention to the movement for democracy in the future.
This helps to explain why China has wielded its might in recent years to assert its authority over gaming companies, increase screening of new games and restrict the sale of those where freedom of speech has become uncomfortable to its government. It also provides the reason why severe punishments have been meted out to professional gamers who have used their positions to challenge its rule.
In the latter category, a Hong Kong esports athlete named Ng Wai Chung (吳偉聰), who competed under the moniker Blitzchung, initially had prize-money withheld and served a professional ban of six months for publicly calling for the liberation of his city during an interview at a gaming event. His interviewers were fired for good measure.
Since then, another professional, Lam Ki-lung (林奇隆), has been excluded by the Esports Association of Hong Kong from its competitions for three years, after he used the word “liberate” in his gamer tag during a match against the Chinese national team.
Hence, with a following wind from ophthalmologists and concerned parents alike, Beijing is only too happy to constrict gaming with new regulations in every way it can. On this occasion, its moves against monetization techniques have spooked investors in the middle of an economic crisis, and it has therefore had to take a rare step back, with Feng Shixin (馮士新), head of the publishing unit at the Chinese Communist Party’s Propaganda Department, serving as the fall guy for the ensuing stock market dive.
However, given that video games are now a proven avenue to pluralism of thought, often with in-built mechanisms for non-state organization and opportunities for protest and protest training, China will be back to pound them again in the future.
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