Fujian Provincial Development and Reform Commission lately issued the Action Plan for Promoting the Development of the E-sports Industry in Fujian Province (2021-2023). The plan proposes to develop and expand the e-sports industry, accelerate the development of a favorable e-sports industry ecology, and cultivate new momentum for economic development. The goal is to build two e-sport city brands, namely "Xiamen, City of E-sports Fashion and Fun" and "Fuzhou, City of E-sports Culture and Tourism" by 2023, which means these two cities will become the "Cross-Strait International E-sports Harbor" with a certain degree of domestic and global influence.

The e-sports is considered to be a new fashion in the digital era. This is a competitive electronic puzzle sports game with information technology as its core, software and hardware equipment as the medium and based on a set of competition rules in a virtual environment. From this perspective, e-sports is no different from physical sports. They both aim to improve participants' thinking and response ability as well as the sense of team coordination, encouraging them to be better selves and realize all-round development. However, the equipment of e-sports is electronic devices, and its medium is electronic games, which mainly target the younger-age group. Therefore, e-sports is often mistaken as the epitome of "Internet addiction" and was once heavily criticized.

In recent years, e-sports has gradually been accepted and recognized, entering the limelight with a positive image. Last year, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MOHRSS) updated the occupation catalog which included 9 new professions and new types of occupations, including e-sports players. It re-establishes e-sports' reputation. In the past, employees in the e-sports industry were regarded as "people not doing their proper jobs." Now that being an e-sports player has become a formal profession, it helps the group to break away from this social stereotype. It is worth mentioning that the Asian Olympic Council decided to make e-sports an official event during the Hangzhou Asian Games next year, which means that e-sports practitioners can also win glory for their countries, which is of milestone significance.

E-sports has developed into a highly promising sunrise industry nowadays. The data from Research Report on China's E-sports Industry in 2021 shows that the overall market size of China's e-sports industry in 2020 reached 147.4 billion yuan, registering a market growth rate of 29.8%. More importantly, the e-sports is known as the "trendy digital sports" and "new cultural carrier". It enjoys a huge base of users and audiences with the ability to integrate and coexist with local industries such as tourism culture and sports exhibition. Furthermore, the e-sports industry is quite adaptable and inclusive as it is not limited by geographic location and natural resources as traditional industries are. Therefore, the e-sports is not only favored by first-tier cities such as Shanghai, Beijing, and Shenzhen, but also the unexplored" blue ocean" that provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) such as Hainan, Chongqing, Hangzhou, etc. fiercely contest for.

Fujian started early and has achieved remarkable results in the development of the digital industry. Therefore, it enjoys its unique characteristics and advantages when it comes to developing the e-sports industry. From the perspective of companies, Fujian’s on-line game industry enjoys a good momentum of development, home to well-known companies such as G-bits and NetDragon. Pingtan has also introduced BUFF, a professional e-sports content operating company. From the perspective of e-sports clubs, e-sports teams of all types, especially the KPL King of Glory Professional League VG Club, are settled down in Xiamen. From the perspective of holding events, the NEST National E-sports Competition Finals has been held in our province for many years on end since 2015. From the perspective of the government, local authorities in Fuzhou, Quanzhou, Xiamen, Pingtan and other places have all strongly supported the e-sports industry in terms of resources, capital, land use, taxation, and talent.

Of course, there is still room for improvement in Fujian's e-sports industry compared with the first-tier cities. First of all, Fujian's e-sports industry lacks the integration of industrial chains. The upstream of the e-sports industry includes game R&D and operation companies, the midstream, event sponsors, operators, organizers and clubs, etc., and the downstream, derivative live broadcast platforms, video websites, and e-sports media. Fujian lacks leading enterprises with e-sports genes and phenomenal, influential products as well as the capacity to support upstream companies to expand their business activities to middle and downstream. Besides, there are not many service-type and platform-type enterprises in the middle link. The supporting companies also do not have strong integration capacity. Second, the amplifying effect between e-sports and other industries is weak. Although Fujian has held many national competitions to promote the development of the local tourism and exhibition industry to a certain extent, e-sports is not strong in driving other industries, especially in integrating with competitive industries such as software and information services and creative cultural industries. Therefore, the efforts did not achieve the expected results. In addition, problems such as the lack of infrastructure conditions, insufficient capacity to host large-scale events, and shortage of e-sports professionals also urgently need to be resolved.

The Action Plan issued by Fujian this time is with good policy orientation and long-term planning. It clarifies the role of the e-sports industry in the region and the country from the macro-policy level and establishes development goals. Besides, the Action Plan put forwards specific requirements and tasks to strengthen the R&D and production of e-sports products, improve the game ecology of the e-sports and promote the dissemination of content and derivative scenarios as well as the cultivation and expansion of e-sports industrial clusters. It is expected that Fujian will continue to improve the system of supportive policies, cultivate local e-sports game companies, introduce a multi-level event system, create an e-sports industry cluster area and focus on the training of e-sports talents so as to build an integrated industrial pattern of "e-sports+" cultural tourism, fashion and other industries, supported by leading enterprises and based on the event economy. Ultimately, the goal is to promote the healthy and prosperous development of the e-sports industry.

Source: www.fjsen.com