World’s Largest Game Vendor Steals $ 60 Billion After Chinese Media Labels “Spiritual Opium”

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The stock price of Tencent, the world’s largest game vendor, rode a roller coaster on Tuesday. Its value has fallen by more than 10 percent after state media labeled the product “mental opium” in an article.

“‘Mental opium’ has grown into a business worth hundreds of billions of billions,” the state-owned Xinhua News Agency’s Economic Information Daily reported early Tuesday morning.

Spiritual opium is a product that can first cause people to become mentally addicted and then impair their physical and mental health.

According to the article, Chinese minors typically suffer from video game addiction, which has serious health consequences, and the largest vendor, Tencent, earned more than $ 24 billion from the market last year. increase.

This article was quickly reposted by China’s web portal, news outlets and online news platform. As a result, the stock prices of Tencent and other Chinese video game suppliers fell dramatically when the market opened.

On the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Tencent’s Stock price Within an hour and a half after the market opened, it fell by more than 10%, clearing the market capitalization of video game companies by about $ 60 billion.

Hong Kong stock market analysts shared the view that the article was a prelude and Beijing authorities would soon curb the video game business.

Noon, local time, economic information daily NS An online version of the article, but I kept a printed page of the scanned article on my website. It’s unclear why Daily removed the online version, but Hong Kong stock market analysts believed it showed that the Chinese administration may not have tried to curb the business.

In the afternoon, stock prices of Tencent and other video game vendors rose, but the closing price was still lower than the opening price of the day.

Epoch Times Photo
People will pass the Tencent Headquarters in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, southern China on May 26, 2021. (NOEL CELIS / AFP via Getty Images)

Stock price up and down

Tencent, China’s largest social media company that owns WeChat and the QQ platform, owns about half of the domestic video game market. It was also the only company named in the article by Economic Information Press.

Tencent is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Tuesday’s opening price is 468.8 HK At the dollar ($ 60.27), it quickly hit a low of HK $ 423.6 ($ 54.46). This is 10.82 percent lower than Monday’s closing price of HK $ 475 ($ 61.07). In the end, the stock closed at HK $ 446 ($ 57.34), 6.1% lower than the previous day.

NetEase is another Chinese video game supplier and main web portal.NetEase share price on Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Tuesday drop From 12.3% to HK $ 145.9 ($ 18.76).Stock price on nasdaq Decrease From 11.41 percent to $ 93.06.

Other Chinese video game companies faced a situation similar to Tencent and NetEase. CMGE stock lost 13.59 percent of its value on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Tuesday. XD stock price Was cut 8.12 percent on the same day.

Epoch Times Photo
On November 4, 2016, two students sitting under a heavy smog pavilion near the Forbidden City in Beijing, China, are looking at their cell phones. (WANG ZHAO / AFP via Getty Images)

Underage game addiction

Economic information coverage may have unknown political and financial intent behind video game reports. However, the report revealed the serious damage that video games can do to children in China.

“Some students spend about eight hours a day on Tencent’s game” Honor of Kings, “” a survey of 1,929 students at Aida Junior High School in Luzhou, Sichuan, southwestern China. The report states, citing. According to the report, “2.28% of the students who participated in the survey play video games for more than 5 hours every day.”

The report interviewed some parents with internet addiction that their children considered to be an unsolvable problem.

“Scores have plummeted since my son started playing video games. He only received 30/100 on the latest math tests,” said his father, named Xia.

“I broke five or six of his cell phones,” he said.

“”[Because I stopped him from playing video games,] He jumped off the balcony on the second floor and didn’t go home all night. Since then, I haven’t dared to discipline him. “

Research sponsored by the Chinese administration report On July 20, 94.9% of Chinese minors used the Internet in 2020, most of them using the Internet to play video games.

According to economic reports, spending a lot of time on video games caused a series of problems for some minors, including depression, violence, refusal to attend school, myopia, insomnia, and even suicide. That is.

A study sponsored by another Chinese administration Release On March 5, it was shown that about 10 percent of elementary school students were diagnosed with depression. The percentage increased to 30% for junior high school students and almost 40% for high school students.

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