When the Chinese State wants its corporate extensions to modify their market practices in some significant way, it has a number of ways to go about doing this, but, for the sake of the preservation of the image of the benevolent dictator, the state generally chooses to send those message as gently as possible, in a public way.
Turns out, the best way to communicate to your government extension, which is what these corporations within China really are, is to simply create news shows and broadcast them across the lands and monitor anyone who tries to do the same thing but iwithout state approval.
Can’t have anyone expressing unorthodox views to the public, that’s the state’s job, responsibility, nay, right, and its right alone.
When the State saw that one of its corporate giants was producing a product that was not producing the desred effects of the state, they just create stories that broadcast this new directive in the form of concerns expressed by pretty newscasters in controlled and highly manipulated frames.
The Chinese State Media told Tencent that their games are spiritual opium and electronic drugs and need to be looked into. The company quickly issued a statement committing to the new direction, both of which caused the shares to stumble abraod.
Investors now realize they hold worthless paper should the centralized personality of Chairman Xi decide to declare whatever must be declared through their state-controlled news outliet whatever narrative gets the message across without making the state look like the heavy-handed thug it really is.
It should be noted the context of the word opium being selected, as there were a series of wars, called the Opium Wars, in the mid 1800s fought against the British by the Chinese, who were fighting the Brits’ efforts to open up China markets to grow and sell opium, to sell domestically as well as imports. Chairman Xi chose his words very well.
From news.sky.com
2021-08-03 03:55:00
Excerpt:
Shares in China’s biggest online gaming companies slumped after state media branded their products “spiritual opium” and compared them to “electronic drugs”.
The criticism – as reported by Reuters news agency – has stoked concerns that the online gaming sector will be the next to receive unwanted attention from Beijing’s regulators, following a crackdown on tech giants in the country.
Tencent’s stock tumbled by more than 10% in morning…
