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"Stand up! Those who refuse to be slaves! Use our flesh and blood to build our newest Great Wall!... Braving the enemy's fire, keep going! Go ahead! Go ahead! Here!"

It was midnight in Chongqing, a city in southwestern China. The melody of China's national anthem-warm and enthusiastic-rose from the crowd of hundreds of students raising their fists. More people marched on campus and sang songs.

Next to a dormitory building, two security guards held down a student, holding a huge black flag with "EDG" written on it. The student did not resist, but lay down on the ground in a contented manner, but still grasped the flagpole tightly with his legs to keep it upright. An onlooker under the camera applauded: "His body has fallen, but the flag will not fall!"

If you think this is another nationalist protest in China, please wait a moment. No, the students are celebrating the victory of EDG (Edward Gaming), an e-sports team funded by Chinese real estate developer Hopson, at the League of Legends World Championship in Reykjavik, Iceland. On the Chinese video sharing platform bilibili.com, at around 12:30 am on November 7th, Beijing time, the last round of live broadcast of the game attracted more than 550 million viewers during the peak period, accounting for about one-third of the Chinese audience. . population. Young people all over the country were crazy about EDG's victory. Students cheered in the dormitory. Thousands of people chanted "EDG Bravo!" ("EDG Bravo!") on the street. Amidst the frenzied celebrations are the middle-aged people’s confused complaints: "I don't care who EDG is. I just want to sleep."

EDG's victory was so great that they almost immediately received congratulations from the Chinese state media CCTV on Weibo. The "EGD赢冠#" label created by CCTV has nearly 1 billion hits within an hour. However, just two months ago, China Central Television announced the government’s latest regulations on electronic games. The regulations are called “anti-addiction” measures, which limit the amount of time children under 18 can play games per week to three hours. It has become the most stringent government regulation of games in the world.

To a certain extent, CCTV's vacillation in e-sports and games reflects the dilemma the Chinese government faces as it approaches this industry. On the one hand, e-sports has huge economic potential and is very much in line with the government’s technological nationalist agenda. On the other hand, they are closely related to online games. This form of entertainment has long been regarded by Chinese parents as "electronic heroin". "

In this article, Pandaly interviewed gamers, e-sports enthusiasts, academics, and industry insiders to discuss how e-sports has been branded as a social construction from the beginning, and how it has developed into this huge industry today. The development of e-sports in China also reflects the interaction, competition and cooperation between different stakeholders from government agencies, enterprises to individual players and fans, and promotes the emergence of a new form of sports and industry. Due to public disputes. By examining the history of Chinese e-sports and the dynamics among various interest groups, our analysis invites readers to reconsider using the oversimplified term "authoritarian/communist China" to deal with China's digital economy and its governance cases.

For anyone who wants to learn more about the history of Chinese e-sports, the difference between e-sports and games is an unavoidable issue. This is also the core of the controversy that has plagued the industry for more than two decades. Simply put, e-sports is a product of competitive games within the framework of modern sports, which is characterized by tournaments and their commercialization. The core of the game industry is that games as products and services generally include the production, distribution, and operation of games. Players continue to pay to make money, while the e-sports industry emerges when competitive games have an impact. Which sports are around And the entertainment industry participates by organizing and promoting competitions. In other words, it is best to understand the e-sports industry as the intersection of the gaming, sports, and entertainment industries.

The difference between gaming and e-sports may be obvious to those in the industry, but for the general public, as will be shown later in this article, and even among some government officials, the two are often used interchangeably. The confusion between the public and policymakers of these two concepts underpins the development trajectory of China's e-sports industry.

Ask people who played video games in China in the early 2000s and they would mention an article published in the party newspaper Guangming Daily on May 9, 2000. The article is titled "Computer Games, Electronic Heroin Targeting Children". A shocking picture of illegal teenagers playing computer games in underground cafes while playing truant from school. An interviewee claimed that "the only result of these children is that boys end up as robbers and thieves, girls Eventually become a prostitute.” This article expresses the moral anxiety of Chinese parents about video games and the Internet as a whole. The Wuhan municipal government, where the undercover report occurred, responded the day after the article was published, using "Thunderbolt" to crack down on computer games. In 2001, the author won the first prize of the "China News Award", and the article was selected as the editor-in-chief of Renmin University of China, one of the top universities in China. However, among Chinese video game players, this article is widely regarded as the "source of all evil" because it not only paved the way for a nationwide ban on video games, but also created the stigma of "electronic heroin" that has lasted for many years. The next twenty years until today.

To make matters worse, after an Internet cafe in Beijing was set on fire by four teenagers in 2002, resulting in 25 deaths, the Chinese government launched an unprecedented severe crackdown. Thousands of Internet cafes and gaming centers across the country were closed. , The use of video game equipment and accessories is prohibited.

In the book "A Brief History of E-sports: From Video Games to Sports", Dai Yanmiao pointed out the importance of Internet cafes as an incubator for early e-sports teams in China. "Small public spaces like Internet cafes provide convenience for team formation... A group of friends get together to fight, which is the first experience of professional e-sports teams." Liu Yang, or "BBKinG", enjoys a high reputation in the Chinese e-sports industry. He is a senior player and the head coach of China's earliest e-sports team "WE". Looking back at the early days of e-sports in China, he also recalled the vigorous development of e-sports teams in Internet cafes around 2000. "Every Internet cafe is funding a semi-professional team. When you walk into any Internet cafe, you will see a picture and introduction of the Internet cafe team on the wall." Therefore, the nationwide crackdown on Internet cafes not only hits the game industry, but also It is a heavy blow to China's emerging e-sports community. In addition, the public outrage and official opposition expressed through the mainstream media, in addition to allegations of game addiction, added another layer of shame to e-sports players: e-sports players are troublemakers hiding in illegal Internet cafes.

Indeed, as the research of Chinese scholars Zhao Yupei and Zhu Yimei reveals, the period from 1999 to 2003 is widely regarded as the "dark age of improvisation" for Chinese e-sports athletes, and "difficult experiences in memory and poor quality of life" are due to The public's negative perception of video games. "At the time, the boundaries between professional and non-professional (players) were not very clear," said a retired Warriors player from Beijing. In the next 20 years or so, these stigmas will continue to be pulled out by conservative opinion leaders, worried parents, and many others to support their various arguments against e-sports.

In terms of policy, 2003 was a turning point for the industry. E-sports was recognized by the State Sports General Administration as the country’s 99th competitive sport, which is officially different from “games”. The policy shift from cracking down on video games to officially recognizing the positive attributes of e-sports seems to be confusing: How could an event that is basically based on “electronic heroin” in official discourse suddenly get approval by China’s top sports regulator?

What is even more confusing is another major policy turn in 2004. On April 17, 2004, the All-China National Sports Federation, a non-governmental organization supervised by the State Sports General Administration, hosted the first national e-sports competition CEG (China E-sports competition). However, three days later, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT) banned all digital TV channels including China Central Television (CCTV) from broadcasting content related to e-sports. Zhao Yupei, an e-sports scholar at Zhejiang University, told Pandaily that removing e-sports from state-owned television channels is a major blow signal for the e-sports industry. "Whether e-sports can enter CCTV is the key to helping e-sports players gain social recognition." An interviewee in Zhao’s study believes, "If e-sports is allowed... [broadcast on TV], it’s for us It will be a milestone", because for the older generation, "CCTV" has transformed into government approval.

It is true that the decision-making process is a black box that is difficult to explore, but the ambiguity of the country’s policy on e-sports, a brand new industry in the early 2000s, precisely reflects the decentralization of the Chinese government’s decision-making process, which requires negotiation and bargaining between different departments. To reach a consensus, in the words of American scholars Lieberthal and Okebsberg, it is often "protracted, disjointed and progressive."

According to Professor Zhao Yupei, there are at least nine departments in China involved in the supervision of e-sports, and each department has its own policy goals. For example, banning Internet cafes reflects the public security department’s willingness to maintain social stability; banning e-sports on television is a correct response to the public's (mainly parents) outrage over gaming addiction (for some people, overreaction) . On the other hand, listing e-sports as the 99th sport in China, and holding e-sports tournaments in the name of the General Administration of Sport of China, represents an attempt to develop an industry with great potential. The success of the Korean e-sports industry is an example, which quickly helped the country Recovered from the 1997 financial crisis.

All in all, in the early stages, Chinese e-sports suffered policy conflicts from different government agencies and social stigma surrounding game addiction and crime. To make matters worse, the early e-sports teams in China were mainly composed of grassroots youths from Internet cafes in China's second- and third-tier cities such as Xi'an and Chongqing, and they desperately needed funding.

Around 2010, most e-sports events in China were organized by e-sports enthusiasts or small-scale third-party sponsors. Affected by the global financial crisis in 2008, major sponsors such as Lenovo and Intel had to reduce their funding for e-sports events, which led to paralysis of many e-sports events and clubs in China. At this critical moment, two major forces came in: Wang Sicong and the game company.

Wang Sicong is the son of Wang Jianlin, chairman of Dalian Wanda Group, China's largest real estate developer. Known as the "China's richest man", Wang has invested heavily in the e-sports industry since 2011, triggering the trend of China's second-generation billionaires investing in e-sports clubs. Professor Zhao Yupei’s research pointed out the importance of Wang’s joining as one of the earliest capital surges to promote the prosperity of the industry. "Almost all interviewees thought that Wang's joining was an extraordinary moment, because it completely changed the entire value chain of the e-sports industry and improved the quality of the entire ecology," Zhao said.

Brother Nao used to be an e-sports player for the Internet cafe team and has worked in the e-sports industry for many years. When talking about the history of Chinese e-sports, he recalled the "suffering" of Wang Sicong's e-sports team before joining the post: low wages, often no pay, playing games on the cheapest and slowest train, sleeping in Internet cafes.

Brother Nao believes that Wang's contribution to this industry is to establish a model that allows players to no longer worry about making ends meet. In addition, in addition to the huge amount of funds invested in e-sports, Wang led several other e-sports clubs in China to establish the China E-sports Association (ACE) in 2011, which is an NBA-like organization responsible for the comprehensive supervision of e-sports. Events in China, as well as the registration and management of e-sports teams. ACE introduced a clear transaction, transfer and loan system to the industry, marking the beginning of a more standardized e-sports market.

Most of China's existing well-known e-sports teams were founded a few years after Wang Sicong entered the industry, including RNG, IG, VG, SN, Snake, etc., all funded by second-generation billionaires. It is especially worth mentioning that this year's League of Legends World Championship champion EDG was founded by Zhu Yihang in 2013. His father owns Hopson Development Holdings Limited.

"I don't care what others think of Wang Sicong, but for us in the e-sports world, he is a savior," Nao Ge said.

In addition to China's second-generation billionaires, there are also game companies, the most famous of which is the Chinese Internet giant Tencent. Unlike Wang Sicong and his wealthy friends who mainly invest in personal e-sports clubs, Tencent's investment has largely contributed to what Professor Zhao Yupei called the industry "umbrella", that is, the value chain and multilateral platform established by Tencent. For many years, they have been under the supervision "umbrella" provided by the Chinese authorities. More specifically, based on the Internet infrastructure, this value chain is composed of upstream game developers, such as Riot Games, a League of Legends developer completely acquired by Tencent in 2015, and the execution of midstream e-sports events, including LPL, etc. Large-scale events (League of Legends Professional League), as well as the production and distribution of e-sports content at the bottom, such as Huya, a live broadcast platform with Tencent as the biggest stakeholder. Tencent has played multiple roles in this model, from authorizing, producing, and distributing content to acting as the executive agency for multiple leagues, playing the role of a monopoly and market leader in China's e-sports industry.

"In fact, China's e-sports industry is following a bottom-up path. You have an industry with such a huge market. The government must come out and make some rules to regulate it," Professor Zhao Yupei explained to Pandaily. "In this regard, the government is just setting the bottom line, leaving enough room for the further development of the industry, and more cultural and creative participation... After all, games contribute so much to GDP."

Indeed, even in the so-called "dark ages" of the 2000s, there was never a total ban on games or e-sports, and the General Administration of Sport’s policy was particularly active. For example, in 2008, e-sports was redefined as the 78th officially recognized sport. From 2007 to 2010, the State Sports General Administration allocated a total of 308 million yuan (48.3 million US dollars) to build e-sports centers and sponsor major events in Xi'an and Beijing and other national e-sports centers.

A careful study of prohibitive policies in the gaming and e-sports industries shows that the “bottom line” is almost always related to the prevention of game addiction and content regulation. For example, in 2005, the State Administration of Press and Publication of China issued a notice requiring major Chinese game companies to develop "anti-addiction systems." In October 2005, 11 popular games tried the system. In 2007, all computer games were required to install an anti-addiction system. In 2011, the State Administration of Press and Publication, together with the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Public Security, launched the real-name authentication of the anti-drug system.

Given that the motivation behind most gaming industry regulation is to protect minors, more such policies can be expected in the future. Nonetheless, as long as the gaming and e-sports industries fulfill their responsibility to protect minors and carefully stay under the "supervisory umbrella"-to borrow the analogy of Professor Zhao-everything should be fine. Regardless of the obligation to protect minors, the Chinese government does have good reasons to support the e-sports industry.

First, as an officially recognized sport for major international sports events such as the Asian Games, e-sports is fully in line with Beijing's technological nationalist agenda. Like any other sporting event, international e-sports competitions are also places to showcase "national power." Live e-sports competitions held in China are presented in the form of media spectacles, helping to create a well-crafted vision for China’s urban development and technological innovation, while players are portrayed as national heroes fighting for the country on the international stage . Chinese e-sports players have long been plagued by negative public opinion about game addiction, and they readily accept this kind of technical nationalist discourse-winning on the international stage is a particularly important factor for the Chinese e-sports community to re-adjust its public image. chance. As Dai Yanmiao, the author of "A Brief History of E-sports," said, "Without exception, they (Chinese e-sports players) like to put the national flag on their body, or hold it in their hands, over their heads."

Second, the e-sports industry is an important part of China's plan to develop a strong digital economy. Since the 2008 global financial crisis, China has been adjusting its economic structure, focusing on the development of advanced digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and big data. In 2015, Premier Li Keqiang proposed the "Internet +" strategy in the government's annual report, calling for the construction of a platform-based and innovative economy. In this context, in 2016, China's e-sports industry ushered in a series of favorable policies from various regulatory authorities:

In addition, for local governments in China, the "e-sports+" model is an excellent strategy for attracting investment and revitalizing the local economy. In China, local governments are not only public service providers, but also major participants who deeply participate in the local economy through the process of “inviting investment”. In the process of “inviting investment”, they provide preferential policies such as land and tax reduction in exchange for large The investment of enterprises is in local economic projects. But if you want to successfully attract investment, you must first have a promising project. This is where e-sports comes in.

In July 2016, China's three ministries and commissions jointly issued the "Notice on Cultivating Characteristic Industrial Towns", proposing to build about 1,000 characteristic towns in tourism, manufacturing, technology, traditional culture and education across the country. E-sports has the attributes of sports, culture, and entertainment, and they are all important sources of stimulating consumption. This makes e-sports a promising economic project for local governments to attract investment. In 2017 alone, at least eight second- and third-tier cities in China, including Hangzhou, Qingdao, and Taicang, announced plans to build "e-sports towns", hoping to boost the local economy through the combination of e-sports, real estate and tourism.

In the 2010s, the sufficient funds of second-generation billionaires such as Tencent and game companies quickly promoted the maturity of China's e-sports industry. Active policy changes driven by China's strategic initiatives to develop a digital economy across major regulatory agencies provide an encouraging policy environment for e-sports in China. But for some people, this industry is still the greatest danger that corrupts the souls of young people and erode their will.

2018 marks another important moment. It provides an opportunity for Chinese e-sports-whether as an industry or a community-to expand its influence and restore its negative publicity caused by computer games in the early 2000s Image. This year, the team IG (Invictus Gaming) funded by Wang Sicong won the League of Legends World Championship. Different from the previous victories of Chinese e-sports teams on the international stage, IG's win in 2018 has attracted unprecedented attention from a wide audience of e-sports and games outside the world. Part of the reason is that Wang Mou's high-profile promotion of the event on social media. The rapid growth of Internet infrastructure, especially live broadcast technology, has also brought a larger audience to the tournament and e-sports itself.

Sharon is a master's student studying Chinese e-sports in Wuhan, one of its main hubs. She calls 2018 the "first year of Chinese e-sports". She told the Panda Daily that after IG won the championship in 2018, the number of women in China's e-sports fan base began to increase sharply. Unlike male peers, they may not even play any e-sports games, but still like to watch e-sports purely. Out of appreciation for the sportsmanship it shows.

22-year-old Hu Yifan (pseudonym) is one of these female fans who are obsessed with e-sports in 2018. Recalling the moment when IG won the championship, she described a scene similar to the young people’s reaction to the EDG victory recorded at the beginning: boys yelled in the dormitory building, and “IG” appeared in major media. "Some people may have heard of the game of League of Legends, but few people know about the game or the team. IG's victory provides people with an opportunity to learn about e-sports," Hu said.

The group that joined the Chinese e-sports fan circle after 2018-female Gen Z who is familiar with online fan culture-is also the most active group on Chinese social media, and has considerable agenda-setting power on entertainment-related topics. Through the work of fans, such as making videos of certain e-sports players or teams, this group in turn has brought more exposure to e-sports among the public. "Fans, especially female fans, are willing to invest a lot of time and energy on their favorite teams and players, and accompany them through the ups and downs," Hu said. Many fans will select highlights from dozens of hours of live broadcasts. . Clips and edit them into short videos. "Most ordinary viewers don't waste too much time on players, so these videos are an effective way to show the players' personality and skills."

With the development of the e-sports industry and the growing popularity of the younger generation, the public's perception of this phenomenon has gradually changed. Compared with the widespread public criticism of gaming and e-sports in the early 2000s, a 2018 Tencent report found that 46% of Chinese parents would support their children to watch e-sports games, while only 7% of respondents opposed it. The industry mainstream media reports also showed a positive trend. It is worth noting that, according to a study by Chinese scholars Liu Shuangqing and Liu Xun, in 2019, only 4% of the negative reports on e-sports in the mainstream media this year.

"The stigma of games and e-sports has never been a problem for us. After 00 (people born after 2000) grow up, games are the most common form of entertainment in their daily lives. This is just a way of gaming. Why? Will there be a problem?” Hu Yifan’s point of view points to a key fact in the decades-long debate about “e-heroin”: games (or e-sports, because they never fully understand the difference between the two) are just the old one. The problem of generations. For young people, games are just one of many entertainment activities, and e-sports is not much different from football and basketball.

Professor Zhao Yupei made similar observations when studying the status change and mental health of Chinese e-sports players. "We found that in most cases, people born in the 70s and 80s tend to use derogatory terms such as'electronic heroin' to refer to anything related to games and e-sports."

This generational difference in the concept of gaming and e-sports is not limited to children and parents in Chinese families. Perhaps more appropriately, this is also a phenomenon perceived by Chinese policymakers who regulate e-sports. As one of the most outstanding e-sports scholars in China, Zhao Yupei participated in the e-sports seminar held in Zhejiang Province in 2020, attended by major government officials from the State Internet Information Office, the Ministry of Propaganda, the State Administration of Radio and Television, and the General Administration of Sports and Sports. The seminar. Several others were also present. "Almost everyone-except for the General Administration of Sports and the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television-thinks that e-sports is the same as a game," Zhao recalled. "The most interesting thing is," she continued, "They all talk about e-sports from the perspective of their parents, and they think it's best not to develop this industry."

It is exciting that Chinese e-sports has received more recognition from the country and society, but Zhao’s experience shows that there is still a clear dissonance between the ruler and the ruled in the understanding of e-sports and the industry.

On August 3, China's official newspaper "Economic Information Daily" published an article titled "'Spiritual Opium' Developed into a 100 Billion Industry", comparing games to "Spiritual Opium." It also believes that the rapid development of the e-sports industry "provides a huge challenge to the prevention of game addiction." Interestingly, this article was quickly deleted, and was reposted shortly afterwards, with the word "mental opium" removed from the title. In late August, the State Administration of Press and Publication issued the most stringent "anti-addiction" regulations so far, requiring game companies to provide players under the age of 18 with no more than 3 hours a week. China’s major professional e-sports leagues welcome new regulations that prohibit underage athletes from participating in future competitions. Take LPL (Tencent League of Legends Professional League) as an example, this group probably accounts for 40%-50%. The next day, the E-sports Management Committee of the Chinese Cultural Management Association issued an initiative calling on its readers to "differentiate video games and e-sports."

See also: Tencent strengthens protection measures for minors following criticism from Chinese official media

This series of events once again demonstrated the complexity of China's e-sports as an industry at the intersection of games, sports and entertainment, sandwiched between the post-1990s and its parents. To be sure, under the overall favorable policy environment, sound value chain and increasing fan base, in the foreseeable future, we can expect the continued growth of e-sports, but it will also be accompanied by the continuous push and pull of different interests. Groups compete to define what eSports is, where it should go, and how to protect the rights of minors in the process.

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This report analyzes the status quo and characteristics of China's e-sports industry, and looks forward to the future development of the industry.

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