‘They only have Fridays and weekends to play’: Video gaming rules begin in China with youngsters only allowed three hours online a week
On a recent Sunday evening in Beijing, a few minutes before 8pm, Huang Chong opened a Harry Potter video game on her smartphone and tried to play.
She couldn’t – by government decree.
A pop up appeared on her screen: “Dear players… Minors can only play online games between 8-9pm on Fridays, weekends and national festivals and holidays. Please arrange your playing time and have a rest.”
New rules in China mean that under 18s are only allowed to play three hours of online games per week, at those time specified.
Huang Chong and her father Huang Wen Shang are pictured together as they discuss the gaming rules in China
Even for a communist state that regulates its citizens lives far more than the West, it is a new extension of control. And that control is now being applied to different parts of society and culture, in a new crackdown.
Huang Chong, who is 15 years old, said she didn’t mind the video game policy too much but said that it’s “like banning smoking, drinking and playing mahjong for adults”.
“My friends send me messages to complain about the ban, that they only have Fridays and weekends to play one hour and they couldn’t socialise with their e-gaming friends,” she told Sky News.
The rules have been introduced to curb video gaming addiction.
Huang Chong said she didn’t have a problem with video gaming. But her father Huang Wen Shang disagreed – and was thankful for the state’s intervention.
“I tried to persuade her to give up the phone, but when’s she already lost in it, she feels happy,” he told Sky News. “She won’t realise she’s playing such a long time that it could affect her eyesight, her health, her studies.
Huang Chong said the policy was “like banning smoking, drinking and playing mahjong for adults”
“As parents, we need help from the outside – from teachers, from government policies.”
Video games are just one part of a new campaign by the Chinese Communist Party to re-assert its values over society.
The perceived hedonism of the last 20 years – you could also call it letting people do what they want – is being replaced by an emphasis on proper socialist values.
Film stars have been berated by the government for promoting what they call “fake, ugly and evil values” and actors have been mysteriously scrubbed from the Chinese internet without explanation.
The government has also introduced measures to curb “chaotic” online fan culture. Karaoke songs that “endanger national unity” or advocate “obscenity” have been blacklisted.
Schools now have bans on foreign textbooks and young students are required to read about “Xi Jinping Thought” – the nebulous official ideology of China’s leader that is enshrined in the constitution of the People’s Republic of China.
Huang Wen Shang agreed with the state’s intervention
And the country’s TV regulator told Chinese media to “resolutely resist showing off wealth and enjoyment” and to consider actors’ political and moral matters when selecting them.
It has also banned what it calls effeminate men from appearing on screens – using the offensive term “niang pao”, roughly translated as “sissy boys”, to describe them in its official announcement.
Activist Lu Ruihai’s group gives information and support to parents whose children have come out.
“Many people use ‘sissy boys’, an aggressive and derogatory word to label people who are not heterosexual, or do not have the typical and traditional sex relations,” he told Sky News.
“The whole LGBTQ community is numb. I think the policy affects negatively the young LGBTQ people who haven’t come out yet.”
Critics and supporters of the new rules have both interpreted them as far reaching – not just ad-hoc policy adjustments.
In an article that was widely republished in official state media, prominent blogger Li Guangman said it was a “profound” political change.
Activist Lu Ruihai is campaigning for information and support to parents whose children have come out
“This is also a return to the original intentions of the Chinese Communist Party… a return to the essence of socialism,” he wrote.
Public opinion would “no longer be a place to worship Western culture,” he wrote.
“Therefore, we need to control all the cultural chaos and build a lively, healthy, masculine, strong and people-oriented culture.”
Back at home, Huang Chong has had her hour of government-sanctioned playtime.
But there are ways around the new rules.
“Many pupils use adults’ phones to log into games,” she told Sky News.
“We’re cleverer. We climb over the firewall. It takes risk to climb over the firewall as it’s illegal. Few people succeed.”
Teenagers – and many other normal Chinese citizens – may now find themselves in such small skirmishes with the state.
World
‘Almost like a game of target practice’: British surgeon says IDF shooting Gazans at aid points
A British surgeon who recently returned from Gaza has told Sky News that there is “profound malnutrition” among the population – and claims IDF soldiers are shooting civilians at aid points “like a game of target practice”.
Dr Nick Maynard spent four weeks working inside Nasser Hospital, where a lack of food has left medics struggling to treat children and toddlers.
The conditions inside the hospital, in the south of the Strip, have been documented in a Sky News report.
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Malnourished girl: ‘The war changed me’
Dr Maynard told The World with Yalda Hakim: “I met several doctors who had cartons of formula feed in their luggage – and they were all confiscated by the Israeli border guards. Nothing else got confiscated, just the formula feed.
“There were four premature babies who died during the first two weeks when I was in Nasser Hospital – and there will be many, many more deaths until the Israelis allow proper food to get in there.”
Palestinians wait to receive food from a charity kitchen in Gaza City. Pic: Reuters
In other developments:
• Israel and the US have recalled their teams from Gaza ceasefire talks
• US envoy Steve Witkoff has accused Hamas “of failing to act in good faith”
• France has announced that it will recognise the state of Palestine
• An influential group of MPs is calling on the UK to “immediately” do the same
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‘Starvation used as a weapon’
‘They were shells’
Dr Nick Maynard has been going to Gaza for the past 15 years – and this is his third visit to the territory since the war began.
The British surgeon added that virtually all of the kids in the paediatric unit of Nasser Hospital are being fed with sugar water.
“They’ve got a small amount of formula feed for very small babies, but not enough,” he warned.
Dr Maynard said the lack of aid has also had a huge impact on his colleagues.
“I saw people I’d known for years and I didn’t recognise some of them,” he added. “Two colleagues had lost 20kg and 30kg respectively. They were shells, they’re all hungry.
“They’re going to work every day, then going home to their tents where they have no food.”
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Ex-Gaza aid worker claims personnel shot at Palestinians
IDF ‘shooting Gazans at aid points’
Elsewhere in the interview, Dr Maynard claimed Israeli soldiers are shooting civilians at aid points “almost like a game of target practice”.
He has operated on boys as young as 11 who had been “shot at food distribution points” run by the US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
“They had gone to get food for their starving families and they were shot,” he said.
“I operated on one 12-year-old boy who died on the operating table because his injuries were so severe.”
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Gaza deaths increase when aid sites open
Dr Maynard continued: “What was even more distressing was the pattern of injuries that we saw, the clustering of injuries to particular body parts on certain days.
“One day they’d be coming in predominately with gunshot wounds to the head or the neck, another day to the abdomen.
“Twelve days ago, four young teenage boys came in, all of whom had been shot in the testicles and deliberately so.
“The clustering was far too obvious to be accidental, and it seemed to us like this was almost like a game of target practice.
“I would never have believed this possible unless I’d witnessed this with my own eyes.”
Palestinians brought to Nasser Hospital after being shot by Israeli forces, according to hospital officials and eyewitnesses. Pic: AP
Sky News has contacted the Israeli Defence Forces for comment.
An IDF spokesperson previously told Sky News it “strongly rejected” the accusations that its forces were instructed to deliberately shoot at civilians.
“To be clear, IDF directives prohibit deliberate attacks on civilians,” the spokesperson said, adding that the incidents are “being examined by the relevant IDF authorities”.
Read more:
Medics at Nasser hospital struggle to feed children
Gaza food situation ‘worst its ever been’
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Israeli military show aid waiting inside Gaza
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has been managing the supply of aid to Gaza since Israel lifted an 11-week blockade in May.
It has four aid distribution sites, all of which are located in Israeli military zones, with journalists prohibited from entering.
More than 1,000 people have been reported killed while trying to receive food aid since the GHF took over, according to the UN.
UNRWA, its relief agency for Gaza, has heavily criticised the scheme.
Commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini said: “The so-called ‘GHF’ distribution scheme is a sadistic death trap. Snipers open fire randomly on crowds as if they are given a licence to kill.”
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
Just a fraction of the aid trucks needed are making it into the enclave, the UN has said, while multiple aid groups and the World Health Organisation have warned Gazans are facing “mass starvation”.
Mr Lazzarini quoted a colleague on Thursday and said malnourished Palestinians in the Gaza “are neither dead nor alive, they are walking corpses”.
Eleven Thai civilians and a soldier have been killed in clashes between Thailand and Cambodia, officials have said, as long-standing tensions in disputed border areas boiled over into open conflict.
Among those killed was an eight-year-old boy, the army said in a statement.
It said most casualties occurred in Si Sa Ket province, where six people were killed after shots were fired at a fuel station.
Smoke and fire in the Kantharalak district in Thailand amid clashes between Thailand and Cambodia. Pic: Army Region 2 via Facebook/Reuters
Another 14 people have been injured in three Thai border provinces.
Thailand’s health minister Somsak Thepsuthin confirmed the fatalities to reporters, adding Cambodia’s actions, including an attack on a hospital, should be considered war crimes.
Both countries accuse one another of starting the military clashes and have downgraded their diplomatic relations in the rapidly escalating dispute. Thailand has also sealed all land border crossings with Cambodia.
Early on Thursday, a Thai F-16 fighter jet bombed targets in Cambodia, according to Thailand’s army.
“We have used air power against military targets as planned,” Thai army deputy spokesperson Richa Suksuwanon said.
Cambodia’s defence ministry said Thai jets had dropped bombs on a road near the ancient Preah Vihear temple, saying it “strongly condemns the reckless and brutal military aggression of the Kingdom of Thailand against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Cambodia”.
What has caused Thailand-Cambodia border clashes?
Thai people who fled clashes take shelter in Surin province. Pic: AP
Fighting has taken place in disputed border areas
‘Civilian areas targeted’
Clashes are ongoing in at least six areas along the border, the Thai defence ministry said.
Thailand’s foreign ministry said Cambodian troops fired “heavy artillery” on a Thai military base on Thursday morning and also targeted civilian areas, including a hospital.
“The Royal Thai Government is prepared to intensify our self-defence measures if Cambodia persists in its armed attack and violations upon Thailand’s sovereignty,” the ministry said in a statement.
A livestream video from Thailand’s side showed people, including children and the elderly, running from their homes and hiding in a concrete bunker as explosions sounded.
The clash happened in an area where the ancient Prasat Ta Muen Thom temple stands along the border between Thailand’s Surin province and Cambodia’s Oddar Meanchey province.
Thai people who fled clashes in Surin province, northeastern Thailand. Pic: AP
‘Conflict not spreading’
Thailand’s acting premier said fighting must first stop before peace talks can start.
Caretaker Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai told reporters there had been no declaration of war and conflict was not spreading into more provinces.
He said Cambodia had fired heavy weapons into Thailand without any specific targets, resulting in civilian deaths.
Earlier on Thursday, Cambodia downgraded diplomatic relations with Thailand to their lowest level, expelled the Thai ambassador and recalled all Cambodian staff from its embassy in Bangkok.
The day before, its neighbour withdrew its ambassador and expelled the top Cambodian diplomat in protest after five Thai soldiers were wounded in a land mine blast, one of whom lost part of a leg.
A week earlier, a land mine in a different contested area exploded and wounded three Thai soldiers, including one who lost a foot.
Relations between the southeast Asian neighbours have collapsed after a Cambodian soldier was killed in an armed confrontation in a disputed border area in May.
Read more on Sky News:
UK’s ‘tough choices’
‘Man-made starvation’ in Gaza
Man ‘scarred’ by Trump max security prison
Nationalist passions on both sides have further inflamed the situation, and Thailand’s prime minister was suspended earlier this month as an investigation was opened into possible ethics violations over her handling of the border dispute.
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
Border disputes are longstanding issues that have caused periodic tensions between the countries. The most prominent and violent conflicts have been around the 1,000-year-old Preah Vihear temple.
In 1962, the International Court of Justice recognised Cambodian sovereignty over the temple area.
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