China has approved the release of dozens of new video games, boosting the shares of some of its biggest tech firms Wednesday on hopes that a long-running and painful crackdown on the sector is easing.<\/p>\n
The announcement follows a report in The Wall Street Journal on Monday that said regulators were wrapping up their investigation into ride-hailing giant Didi and will allow it to register new users.<\/p>\n
Officials in China \u2014 the world\u2019s biggest gaming market \u2014 rolled out a series of restrictions last year as part of a sweeping government campaign to rein in huge tech firms.<\/p>\n
They capped the amount of gaming time for children with the stated aim of fighting addiction and froze approvals for new games for nine months, hammering the bottom lines of many companies including sector titan Tencent.<\/p>\n
China\u2019s National Press and Publication Administration said Tuesday it had approved 60 new games, following the year\u2019s first batch of approvals in April.<\/p>\n
Titles from Tencent or rival NetEase were not among the latest approvals, but they did include games from Perfect World and miHoYo \u2014 developer of the international hit \u201cGenshin Impact\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are delighted to see established studios such as Perfect World, Shengqu Games, MiHoYo, and Changyou obtained approval titles this time, which we believe could indicate higher possibilities for Tencent\u2019s and NetEase\u2019s titles to be approved in coming batches,\u201d said Citi analysts in a note.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe approval announcement will also send a positive signal of policy support to the overall China Internet sector.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chinese tech stocks surged in Hong Kong on the news, building on the positive sentiment among investors and analysts after the report on Didi earlier in the week.<\/p>\n
At the break in Hong Kong, Tencent was up 4.7 percent while NetEase climbed 2.9 percent<\/p>\n
The gaming news also boosted other major tech stocks \u2014 Hong Kong market heavyweight Alibaba was up more than eight percent and JD.com piling on more than four percent.<\/p>\n
During the clampdown, hundreds of Chinese game makers pledged to scrub \u201cpolitically harmful\u201d content from their products and enforce curbs on underage players to comply with government demands.<\/p>\n
China\u2019s economy, the world\u2019s second-largest, has been hammered in recent months by a series of major Covid lockdowns, and the government has rolled out a series of measures to resuscitate it.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Bloomberg News contributed to this story<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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