Beijing _ Agencies
The Chinese capital, "Beijing ", has unveiled plans to regulate the online gaming market, due to high levels of cases of short-sighted children, demanding the need to restrict play time.
The plan aims to reduce the number of new games available online, restrict play time and develop a system that determines the ages of children who are allowed to practice those games.
A 2015 report found that 500 million Chinese people are visually impaired, nearly half of the population above the age of five, according to the BBC Arabic channel.
China is the world´s largest electronic gaming market and the shares of domestic technology companies have dropped sharply after that report.
The Chinese Ministry of Education released its new policies on Monday, after President Shi Jinping earlier this week called for increased national attention to visual health.
The document blamed the high levels of myopia on the number of hours of schooling, the spread of mobile phones and other electronic devices, the lack of outdoor activities and the lack of exercise.
There is no unanimity that the games cause myopia, but studies have raised this as a possible cause.
In recent decades, there has been a significant rise in the number of cases of myopia around the world, especially in East Asian countries with the highest rates, prompting recent authorities in those countries to raise greater concerns about the online gaming industry.
Earlier this month, lawmakers withdrew the famous video game "Monster Hunter World " produced by Tencent after they received a number of complaints about the title of the game.
Last year, China´s People´s daily newspaper described another game produced by the same company named "Onar of Kings" as "poison " and "psychedelic " after fears that children spend a lot of time playing.
The Chinese censorship stopped issuing licenses for local video games in March March, causing delays in the release of new games and new features for the current games.
