Equate To The Dangers Of Opium In The Qing Dynasty, China Restricts Children Under 18 From Playing Online Games

Online game illustration. (Unsplash/Kelly Sikkema)

JAKARTA - The Chinese government restricts children under 18 years old from playing online games, in order to avoid addiction that can endanger the child's life and mentality, with a scheme of limiting hours and days.

Children under 18 years old are only allowed to play online games for one hour a day, which can only be done between 8pm and 9pm on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays or public holidays.

The ban will be imposed by online gaming companies who are now required to strictly enforce the rules, requiring users to register accounts with their real identities to play.

As reported by SkyNews on August 30, the new restrictions were announced on Chinese social media platform Weibo by The People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, as well as by the General Administration of Press and Publications.

It followed shares in China's biggest online gaming company slumping after state media branded their product as "spiritual opium" and compared it to "electronic drugs" earlier this month.

In the past, China had bad experiences with opium, including narcotics, where opium-addicted societies brought by European powers such as Great Britain and France, paralyzed the Qing Dynasty in the mid-19th century through large imports of the drug. One of the effects was the handover of Hong Kong to Britain as a sovereign territory, before it was returned in 1997.

Illustration of online games. (Unsplash/Onur Binay)

The crackdown on gaming companies was sparked by an article published by the state-run Economic Information Daily that warned teenagers were addicted to online video games and called for the industry to stop.

The newspaper specifically appeared to criticize Tencent's flagship game, Chinese multinational technology company 'Honor Of Kings', which students reportedly sometimes played for up to eight hours a day.

"No industry, no sport, can be allowed to develop in a way that would destroy a generation," the paper wrote, comparing online video games to 'electronic drugs'.

The newspaper called for a 'mandatory way' to force online gaming companies to prevent addiction among young players.

Tencent, which was behind the development of the latest Pokemon game released last month, responded by saying it would introduce new measures to limit access to its games and the time children spend on them.

Following the criticism, Tencent imposed restrictions on its Honor of Kings game, limiting children under 18 to play only one hour a day normally and two hours a day on holidays, but a new decree from the General Administration of Press and Publications goes a step further.