14 DAY TRIAL // The Chinese government, through one of its media mouthpieces, the Beijing Times, is saying that more than four million of China's youngsters are "addicted" to online games, mainly MMOs and virtual worlds, while also classifying these games as "unhealthy" for both the physical and psychological development of these young people.
The newspaper article basically says that "Internet-addicted teenagers" are now accounting for more than 10% of the total population of China, which has access to the Web on a regular basis and is under the age of 18. The AFP news agency reports that the claims in the article were attributed to Li Jianguo, who apparently is a vice chairman of the standing committee of the National People's Congress, a medium ranking figure in the vast bureaucracy of the Communist Party that runs China.
His committee is now saying that stricter monitoring of the games that have illegal or inappropriate content is needed to make sure that China's youth is not affected. It seems that the committee has a pretty wide definition of what is "unhealthy," which includes all forms of extreme violence, all games that have even the slightest hint of sexual content and even those in which Chinese citizens are being featured as the enemy of the player.
There are already some pretty tough regulations that the developers and operators of online games must abide by. The Chinese government asks companies to submit a monthly monitoring report regarding standards, particularly when it comes to foreign developed games. References to Taiwan and Tibet have often led to the closure of the sites or the forums of some Internet based games. Still, titles like World of Warcraft are very popular in China.
There's also a plan currently under implementation which aims to limit the number of hours that a gamer can spend playing continuously. The government claims that it will not use the identification data provided as part of the plan to monitor activity, but only to make sure that gamers do not play a game for too long in one session.