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Re:Tencent loses $20B in value after China attacks myopia wi... by dnomad on Tuesday September 04, 2018 @05:10AM (#17907663)
It's not really about myopia as such... There's really two things going on here: (1) Many people increasingly regard video games as an addictive drug [1]. And there's plenty of anecdotal evidence of young men literally dying because they don't do anything else but play video games for 10+ hours a day, everyday. For various reasons, Chinese culture takes a very, very dim perspective of addictive drugs. (2) Some people believe Tencent is too powerful. It's well on its way to being China's first trillion dollar company and it's not just a Chinese company any more, it's a multinational corporation (MNC). For various reasons, Chinese culture takes a very dim perspective of MNCs [3].

I suspect pragmatism will win in the end though. There's enormous demand for video games and it's simply not practical to completely ban them a la actual chemical drugs. To do so would also be ceding what is likely a trillion dollar market to South Korea... which would be totally insane.

[1] https://index.qz.com/1024281/honor-of-kings-called-a-drug-in...

[2] http://www.ejinsight.com/20180608-tencent-walking-a-fine-lin...

[3] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/are-chinas-multinational-...

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