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China

People Can’t Stop Playing This Game That Lets You Clap for Chinese President Xi Jinping

By
Julia Zorthian
Julia Zorthian
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By
Julia Zorthian
Julia Zorthian
Down Arrow Button Icon
October 19, 2017, 11:50 AM ET
clap xi jinping app china communist party congress
This photo illustration shows a woman playing a game called "Clap for Xi Jinping: A Great Speech", in Shanghai on October 19, 2017.CHANDAN KHANNA—AFP/Getty Images

Not in a situation where you can applaud Chinese President Xi Jinping in person? A new mobile game will save the day.

China’s tech company Tencent released an app, Clap for Xi Jinping, in honor of the leader’s major speech Wednesday at the Communist Party’s 19th National Congress. The game plays clips from Xi’s three-and-a-half-hour remarks and then challenges users to see how many times they can “clap”—or tap on the screen of their phone with their fingers — in 18 seconds.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress happens every five years, and the game is just one aspect of the propaganda surrounding the meeting.

The app opens within WeChat, the massive Chinese messaging app with roughly a billion users that Tencent oversees. Then users enter the Great Hall of the People in Beijing to watch speech excerpts concerning Xi’s vision for China in his second term as president.

By Wednesday evening local time, the game racked up over 400 million plays, according to What’s on Weibo. That amounts to more than 1 billion individual claps, the New York Times reports.

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By Julia Zorthian
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