Players ‘applaud’ Chinese President in Tencent game

A smartphone game in which players can “applaud” Chinese president Xi Jinping has gone viral. The app, released in the week of the Communist Party Congress, lets users clap for Mr Xi by tapping their phone screen as many times as possible in 19 seconds.

The game, from Tencent, has racked up 1.2 billion plays in three days.
Public displays of loyalty to the president are commonplace in China and have intensified ahead of the congress.

The closed-door summit, which ends on Tuesday, will determine who rules China and the country’s political direction.

Mr Xi, who is widely expected to be re-appointed as leader, opened the summit with a speech lasting three and a half hours, in which he said China had entered a “new era” and should “take centre stage in the world”.

In the Tencent game, users are shown extracts of the speech on topics such as regulating the housing market to protect young homebuyers, or improving the lives of poor farmers.

They are then encouraged to tap the screen to see how fast they can “applaud”.

Many have challenged friends to compete and shared their scores on social media.

On Thursday, Tencent said players had clapped over a billion times in total so far.

- BBC