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Why does China's government hate video games so much? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I saw a post here (https://lemmy.ml/post/1179679) about some Chinese kid spending USD 64k on video games and I read the news article and found myself down a rabbit hole.

https://www.techspot.com/news/98980-13-year-old-spent-64000-parents-money-mobile.html

China has long held a dim view of video games, calling them "electronic drugs" a few years ago. It only allows those under 18 to play online games for one hour, between 8 pm and 9 pm local time, on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays.

So basicaly, this article says that China (or more accurately the Chinese government) has a dim view of video games.

So I kept digging and found this article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/30/business/media/china-online-games.html

“I think this is the right policy,” she said. “It amounts to the state taking care of our kids for us.”

This phrase just screams "BAD PARENT" to me.

Why do you have to offload the responsibility of caring for your children to the government? You chose to bring them into the world, now you're responsible for them.

Which brings me to my question... why does China's government hate video games so much? Why would they want to impose such draconian restrictions on childrens' free time?

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[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Authoritarians really don't like when it they can't control communication, which definitely includes creative expression in media. Games fall under that umbrella so the government is going to do what it needs to in order to keep enough control over the media in question.

The "reasons" why aren't really important and will be figured out and thrown around as needed. But it really just comes down to control.