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RIYADH: China stocks fell on Thursday as worries over fresh COVID-19 outbreaks and mortgage-payment boycott overshadowed gains in tech shares. 

China’s blue-chip CSI300 lost 1.1 percent, while the Shanghai Composite Index declined 1 percent. In Hong Kong, the benchmark Hang Seng was down 1.5 percent.

Video game revenue falls

China’s video games sector revenue declined in the first half of 2022 for the first time since the data was made available 14 years ago, as the world’s biggest video games market continues to reel from Beijing’s tightening oversight.

The industry’s combined revenue declined 1.8 percent to 147.7 billion yuan ($21.8 billion) in the six months ended June, according to a report published by the China Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association, a state-backed industry group, on Thursday.

It marks the first drop since the data began being published in 2008 and reflects how China’s massive gaming industry, once marked by unbridled growth, has been heavily bruised by Beijing’s efforts to tighten its oversight of the sector, including by reducing the number of gaming licenses given out and limiting play time for teens.

The report also shows that the number of gamers nationwide fell for the first time, dropping to 665.69 million from 666.57 million reported in December.

Chinese gaming companies’ domestic revenue fell 4.25 percent to 124.5 billion yuan. With heavy regulations at home, companies have been turning to overseas markets for growth, where revenue rose 6.16 percent to nearly $9 billion in the period.

China fines Didi Global $1.2 billion

China’s cybersecurity regulator on Thursday fined Didi Global Inc. $1.2 billion, concluding a probe that forced the ride-hailing leader to delist from New York within a year of its debut and made foreign investors wary about China’s tech sector.

Didi ran afoul of the Cyberspace Administration of China, when it pressed ahead with its US stock listing even though it was urged to wait while a cybersecurity review of its data practices was conducted, sources previously told Reuters.

The CAC said Didi had violated three major laws concerning cybersecurity, data security and personal information protection, a regime that the country revised and expanded last year as part of efforts to regulate its cyberspace and require companies to improve their handling of data.

The regulator also said its investigation found Didi had illegally collected millions of pieces of user information over a seven-year period starting in June 2015 and carried out data processing activities that seriously affected national security.

(With input from Reuters)