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People & Points
Print Edition> People & Points
UPDATED: January 30, 2008 NO.5 JAN.31, 2008
Gaming Tycoon Refutes Criticism
For Shi Yuzhu, founder of China's fastest growing online game operator, the wealth he has garnered through his controversial business is not a source of glory
 
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For Shi Yuzhu, founder of China's fastest growing online game operator, the wealth he has garnered through his controversial business is not a source of glory. For years, the 46-year-old chairman of the New York-listed Giant Interactive Entertainment Group Inc., along with his counterparts in the industry, has been blamed for the gaming addiction of many players, mostly teens. However, Shi said the blame has been laid at the wrong door.

Citing results of psychological studies at an annual forum of the online gaming industry on January 15-17, Shi argued that people would be obsessed with anything, not only online games, if they had no love at home. Based on his research, he called on the public to stop demonizing the multibillion-dollar industry in which he is engaged.

Shi has every reason to fight back, because it is the online gaming industry that has allowed him to regain his footing in the business world after incurring debts of 300 million yuan ($36.14 million then) in the late 1990s from an ill-planned property project.

In 2004, Shi entered the online gaming industry by establishing the Giant Interactive Group Inc. (previously known as ZhengTu Network Science Technologies Co. Ltd.). With only one officially launched game, ZT Online, more tailored to adult than adolescent tastes, the company has risen to the third largest online game operator in China by market share (15 percent) in the second quarter of 2007. Last October, Giant Interactive Group Inc. raised $886.6 million with the largest initial public offering by a Chinese company on U.S. markets in the year. Shi was the 15th richest Chinese man in 2007, according to China's Rich List compiled by Briton Rupert Hoogewerf, worth 2.8 billion yuan (nearly $400 million).

At the end of 2007, the number of online gamers in China topped 40 million, an increase of 23 percent over 2006. According to a report by research firm IDC and the China Publishers Association, the online gaming market grew 61.5 percent to 10.6 billion yuan ($1.47 billion).

The General Administration of Press and Publication, regulator of the online gaming industry, has recently announced that it would intensify crackdowns on games that encourage killing and gambling in a bid to attract users and boost profits.

"The task of controlling pollution and traffic congestion is arduous."

Acting Mayor Guo Jinlong, listing major challenges to Beijing's Olympic preparation, in a report to the local legislature on January 20

"By 2020, farmers will have the same rights and development opportunities as urban residents."

Ma Liqiang, Deputy Secretary General of the National Development and Reform Commission, telling an international conference on balanced urban-rural development on January 22 that reform of the country's rigid household registration (hukou) system, which divides residents into farming and non-farming population, would be accelerated

"We are not forecasting a recession, but clearly there is a slowdown."

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, after the Federal Reserve slashed its key interest rate by 75 basis points, the largest reduction in the federal funds rate that has been used by the Federal Reserve since the early 1990s as its main monetary policy lever

"We believe all our partners in the international community should understand clearly and have no doubts that in order to protect its and its allies' sovereignty and territorial integrity, Russia will use its armed forces, including nuclear weapons, and it can do it preemptively."

Russia's Armed Forces Chief of Staff General Yuri Baluyevski, quoted by Interfax news agency, at a scientific conference in Moscow on January 19

"We are not a banana republic."

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who was on a European tour, saying on January 22 that he wasn't concerned about the stability of his country while he was away



 
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