Recently Yahoo News on-line reported the following:
Tencent Leads $80 Billion Rout as China Rekindles
Crackdown Fear (1/2)
Zheping Huang, Jing Jin and Sarah Zheng
Fri, December 22, 2023 at 2:10 a.m. PST
(Bloomberg) -- Tencent Holdings Ltd. led an $80 billion
selloff in some of China’s biggest online names, after the surprise imposition
of new gaming curbs revived fears Beijing may again be targeting the country’s
giant internet sector.
The top gaming regulator on Friday published draft rules
broadly designed to clamp down on practices that encourage players to spend
more money and time online. They encompassed caps on the amount each player can
spend within a game, a ban on rewards for frequent log-ins and forced
player-duels, even a prohibition on content that violates national security.
The sweeping restrictions, which caught industry players and investors off guard on the final trading day before Christmas, reminded many of the brutal tech-sector crackdown of 2021. That year, various agencies abruptly imposed curbs on sectors from e-commerce to entertainment, reining in Jack Ma-backed Ant Group Co. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. while decimating the online education industry by declaring profits illegal.
As with two years ago, Friday’s regulations emerged with little warning and were at once so vague and all-encompassing that investors couldn’t decipher the intent or potential fallout. Outraged and confused posts dominated a WeChat group of hundreds of developers and designers, many complaining in particular about the unspecified cap on player spending. Chinese games are known for shrewd designs and promos that encourage players to spend on decorating and burnishing their avatars — the main source of income for Tencent and its rivals.
Asia Gaming Stocks Sink on Surprise New China Curbs: Street Wrap
Tencent slid as much as 16% — its biggest intraday fall since 2008 — while smaller rival NetEase Inc. dived a record 28%. Bilibili Inc., a social media service popular with gamers, fell 14%. Combined, the three stocks lost as much as $80 billion in market value on Friday. Shares in Prosus NV and Naspers Ltd., Tencent’s major shareholders, sank in Europe.
“The government gaming curb measures will hurt gaming companies’ earnings,” said Yang Junxuan, a fund manager at Shanghai Junniu Private Fund Management Co. “But the more important concern is people are worrying that more measures targeting the sector will come, just like what Beijing did to the education sector in the past.”
The Communist Party since 2020 has waged a campaign against a private sector it regarded as amassing too much power and expanding recklessly, threatening its control of the world’s No. 2 economy.
“It caught people off guard, right before the holiday and hitting sentiment hard. It feels disheartening as well for this to happen after a year that is already so difficult for market,” said Willer Chen, senior analyst at Forsyth Barr Asia Ltd.
Xi Jinping’s administration has long sought to combat gaming addiction, blaming online entertainment for the rise of myopia among youths. Chinese users spend more time online on average than in many other markets, fueling the rise of services like Douyin and WeChat. Critics have also linked that to various ills from unemployment to low birth rates. At the height of the tech-sector crackdown, the government froze approvals for new titles and launched several investigations into content, forcing developers including Tencent to modify certain games.
On a separate WeChat feed, Tencent investors and employees called out the rules as irrational and out of touch. Cai Wensheng, a prominent Chinese venture capital investor who co-founded the photo touch-up app Meitu, said on WeChat: “A policy kills an industry.” He later deleted the post. Adding to the confusion, the same gaming regulator on Friday approved 40 new online gaming titles for distribution in China, earlier than anticipated.
(to be continued)
（彭博）— 在出人意料地實施新的遊戲限制措施及再次引發人們對北京方面可能再次針對中國龐大的互聯網行業的擔憂之後，騰訊控股有限公司帶領了一些中國最大的網絡公司帶領股價下跌達800
億美元。
週五，最高遊戲監管機構發布了規則草案，旨在打擊鼓勵玩家在網路上花費更多金錢和時間的行為。 其中包括每個玩家在遊戲中可以花費的金額上限、禁止頻繁登入獎勵和強迫玩家決鬥，甚至禁止違反國家安全的內容。
這些全面的限制措施, 令行業參與者和投資者在聖誕節前的最後一個交易日措手不及，這讓許多人想起了2021 年的科技行業殘酷鎮壓。那一年，各個政府機構突然對從電子商務到娛樂等產業實施了限制，遏制了馬雲支持的螞蟻集團和阿里巴巴集團控股有限公司，同時宣布線上教育產業利潤非法從而摧毀了它。
兩年前一樣，週五的監管規定幾乎沒有任何警告，而且內容非常模糊且包羅萬象，以至於投資者無法解讀其意圖或潛在後果。 數百名開發者和設計師組成的微信群組,充斥著憤怒和困惑的帖子，其中許多人特別抱怨玩家支出上限未明確。 中國遊戲以精明的設計和促銷而聞名，鼓勵玩家花錢裝飾和打磨自己的角色 - 這是騰訊及其競爭對手的主要收入來源。
中國出人意料的新限制措施導致亞洲遊戲股下跌：Street Wrap
騰訊股價下跌 16%，為 2008 年以來最大單日跌幅，而規模較小的競爭對手網易股價則下跌 28%，創歷史新高。 深受遊戲玩家歡迎的社群媒體服務 Bilibili Inc. 下跌 14%。 週五，這三隻股票的市值合計損失高達 800 億美元。 騰訊主要股東 Prosus NV 和 Naspers Ltd. 的股價在歐洲下跌。
上海 Junniu 私募基金管理有限公司基金經理 Yang Junxuan 表示：「政府的博彩遊戲限制措施將損害遊戲公司的獲利。但更重要的擔憂是，人們擔心會出現更多針對該行業的措施，就像北京過去對教育行業做了什麼」。
自2020年以來，共產黨對私營行業發起了一場運動，它認為私營行業積累了過多的權力並肆意擴張，威脅到其對世界第二大經濟體的控制。
Forsyth Barr Asia Ltd 高級分析師 Willer Chen 表示：「就在節日之前，這讓人們措手不及，嚴重打擊了人們的情緒。 在市場已經如此艱難的一年之後，出現這種情況也令人感到沮喪」。
開始對遊戲的打擊實際上早於這次運動，第一次暫停遊戲審批是從 2018 年左右開始的。
習近平政府長期以來致力於打擊遊戲成癮，並將青少年近視率上升歸咎於網路娛樂。 中國用戶平均上網時間比許多其他市場都多，這推動了抖音和微信等服務的崛起。 批評者也將其與失業和低出生率等各種弊病聯繫起來。 在科技業打壓最嚴重的時候，政府凍結了新遊戲的審批，並對內容發起了多項調查，迫使包括騰訊在內的開發商修改某些遊戲。
在另一封微信上，騰訊投資者和員工稱這些規則不合理且脫離實際。 中國著名風險投資人、美圖應用程式聯合創始人 Cai Wensheng 在微信上表示： 「政策殺死一個行業」。 他後來刪除了該帖子。 更令人困惑的是，該遊戲監管機構週五批准了 40 款新的線上遊戲在中國發行，時間上早於預期。
（待續）
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