Man Snatched Phone From Game-Addicted Son, Threatened With Cleaver: Report

A video of a Chinese boy threatening his father with a meat cleaver has shocked Chinese social media. The father did not allow him to play video games and confiscated his mobile phone, according to a report by South China Morning Post.

The 13-second video has sent shockwaves across social media platforms. The clip was shot by an unidentified person in the southern Chinese autonomous region of Guangxi.

The video shows a school student waving a meat cleaver in front of a middle-aged man who took away the young boy's mobile phone. He was heard shouting "give it back to me".

The boy continues to wave the weapon in front of his father. The middle-aged man eventually overpowers him and takes away the chopper.

According to SWCP, the video was filmed on February 10. The person who shot the video told a TV channel that the two individuals in the video were father and son. The identity of the boy and father was not revealed.

Media reports said that the scary stand-off started after the father asked his son to stop playing video games and confiscated the mobile phone. Soon after, the boy became angry and grabbed the chopper to threaten his father.

The shocking video has been viewed more than 7 million times on the Chinese social media platform Weibo. The social media users criticised the boy's behaviour.

Video game addiction is a very common phenomenon in China.

In September 2021, China had forbidden under-18s from playing video games for more than three hours a week, a stringent social intervention that it said was needed to pull the plug on a growing addiction to what it once described as "spiritual opium".

However, by the end of 2022, China showed signs its intense crackdown on the video game sector was easing.