The stock price of the world’s largest games vendor Tencent went on a roller coaster ride on Tuesday. Its value dropped over ten percent after state-run media labelled its products as “spiritual opium” in an article.
“A ‘spiritual opium’ has grown into a several hundred billion worth business,” the state-run Xinhua affiliated Economic Information Daily reported on early Tuesday morning.
Spiritual opium refers to products which can first make people have a mental addiction, then go on to damage their physical and mental health.
The article said that it’s common that Chinese minors have video game addiction, which severely impacts their health, and the largest vendor, Tencent, earned over $24 billion from the market last year.
The article was quickly reposted by Chinese web portals, news outlets, and online news platforms. As one of the consequences, stock prices of Tencent and other Chinese video game suppliers dropped dramatically when markets opened.
Hong Kong stock market analysts shared the opinion that the article was a prelude, and that the Beijing authorities would soon suppress video game businesses.
In the afternoon, stock prices of Tencent and other video game vendors increased but the closing prices were still lower than the day’s opening prices.
Stock Price’s Up and Down
Tencent, China’s largest social media firm who owns WeChat and QQ platforms, owns about half of the video game market in the country. It was also the only company that the Economic Information Daily named in its article.Tencent is listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange.
Gaming Addiction in Minors
The Economic Information Daily might have unknown political and financial intentions behind the video game report. But the report did reveal the severe damage that video games bring upon Chinese children.“Some students spend about eight hours a day on Tencent’s game ‘Honor of Kings,’” the report said, citing a survey that it did on 1,929 students from Lantian Middle School in Luzhou City, in southwestern China’s Sichuan Province recently. The report found that “2.28 percent of students who participated in the survey play video games for over five hours everyday.”
The report interviewed several parents whose children have internet addiction which was deemed, by them, as an unsolvable problem.
“My son’s score has plummeted since he started to play video games. He only received 30/100 in the latest math test,” a father surnamed Xia said.
“I have broken five or six of his cellphones,” he said.
“[Because I stopped him from playing video games,] he jumped out of the balcony on the second floor, and didn’t come home for the whole night. Since then, I haven’t dared to discipline him.”
Spending a long time on video games caused a series of problems for some minors, which included depression, violence, refusal to go to school, shortsightedness, insomnia, and even suicide, the Economic Information Daily quoted Chinese officials.