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Slate Technology

What Next TBD: China vs. Video Games

Slate Technology

Slate

Society & Culture, Technology, History

4.6636 Ratings

🗓️ 17 September 2021

⏱️ 16 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Recently, China restricted video game playing to just three hours a week for its young people: 8pm to 9pm, Friday through Sunday. And that’s not the only change. Over the last few months, private tutors, diehard celebrity fans, and tech giants have all faced fresh restrictions from Beijing. What’s behind this new wave of crackdowns? Guest: Brenda Goh, technology correspondent for Reuters Host: Lizzie O’Leary Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

There are days when you're hungry for McDonald's.

0:04.0

Then there are days when you're Big Arch hungry for McDonald's.

0:08.1

You'll get to know the difference.

0:09.9

New Big Arch for Big McDonald's hunger.

0:15.4

Until 9th of September from 11 a.m.,

0:17.8

participating restaurants only, subject to availability.

0:23.7

I heard a little factoid the other day that absolutely floored me about video games in China.

0:29.4

And it's this. China has twice as many gamers as the US has people, some 700 million of them.

0:36.7

When you go on the streets, when you are waiting at a bus stop, when you're in the supermarket,

0:41.2

it's inevitable, especially if you see a kid with his handphone out, he'll be playing a game,

0:45.9

or she'll be playing a game.

0:47.3

That's Brenda Goh. She covers technology in China for Reuters.

0:50.8

It's pretty much in your face everywhere you go. I mean, it's the world's biggest video games market.

0:55.0

That ubiquity, especially among young people, has worried China's central government.

1:00.0

So at the start of this month, they banned people who are under 18 from playing video games for more than three hours a week.

1:07.0

They can only play from 8 to 9 p.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights.

1:13.4

And it's not just video games. The government has gone after tutoring companies and big tech players.

1:19.1

Brenda calls this the season of crackdowns. They've laid down new ground rules. They've cracked down

1:24.7

on a whole bunch of sectors, in a sense to bring them better in line with what they perceive as socialist values.

1:35.8

Yes, this is China.

1:37.3

So some of this is to be expected.

1:39.6

But Brenda says these moves are part of a bigger plan.

...

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