Tencent Comes Up With a Novel Way to Applaud China's President
- Game invites users to applaud Xi Jinping’s congress speech
- Chinese internet companies race to pledge loyalty to the Party
Game invites users to applaud Xi Jinping’s congress speech.
Photographer: Qilai Shen/BloombergYou can always count on Tencent to entertain the masses, especially if it means stroking the ego of China’s president.
A day after the 19th Party Congress kicked off with a marathon speech by Xi Jinping, Tencent Holdings Ltd. rolled out a game to enlist its 1 billion users on WeChat in a clapping competition. After watching highlights of his three-and-a-half hour monologue, users have 19 seconds to repeatedly mash an “applaud” button superimposed on an iconic image of the Great Hall of the People. The game had garnered more than 800 million claps by Thursday morning -- a tribute to a seminal address that transfixed markets and was broadcast live on virtually every Chinese TV station Wednesday.