Game gives Xi Jinping a big hand
BEIJING: Ordinary young Chinese may not have paid close attention to Xi Jinping’s three-and-a-half-hour speech this week, but they’re happy to “applaud” the president in the newest viral phenomenon to sweep China’s internet.
Tencent, the internet giant behind the WeChat messaging app, rolled out a game this week that lets users clap for Xi by pressing on their phone screen as many times as possible in 19 seconds. In three days, the game has racked up 1.2 billion plays, as many shared their scores on social media.
Xi kicked off the rul- ing Communist Party’s 19th national congress this week and declared a “new era” of China’s rise on the world stage.
Delegates next week will grant him a second five-year term as party leader and select new members of the nearly 90-million-strong party’s leading bodies.
Xi has amassed more power than any Chinese leader in decades and often gets public displays of loyalty from party cadres.
A populist leader who has spearheaded a sweeping anti-corruption campaign, Xi’s face appears prominently on billboards and trinkets sold in tourist areas. Top officials frequently invoke his name and praise his political thought in ways that have drawn comparisons to the Mao Zedong era.
In the Tencent game, users are shown a brief snippet of Xi’s speech on topics such as improving the lives of poor far mers or regulating the housing market to protect young homebuyers. They are encouraged to tap the screen to applaud.
However, Xi has called for tighter control over industry, including the tech sector.
The government might be considering buying stakes in tech giants, including Tencent.
One of China’s most powerful internet companies, Tencent was fined by regulators in September for failing to regulate content being shared on WeChat, a ubiquitous app that is used for chats, payments and everyday shopping. – AP