Applauding for Chinese President and Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping during his marathon speech was an inescapable necessity at China's biggest political event of the year -- the 19th Party Congress on Oct. 18.

It was reported that congress delegates applauded Xi 71 times during his 3 hour 23 minute work report in this year's party congress.

"Excellent Speech: Clap for Xi Jinping"

Chinese social media giant Tencent rolled out an online game on the same day allowing people to clap along to Xi’s speech from the comfort of their own homes.

Called "Excellent Speech: Clap for Xi Jinping", the game became an instant hit online.

Players are first played a short snippet of Xi's hours-long speech before they are allowed to show their appreciation by tapping their phones, which will register each tap as a "clap".

Shortly after, the game begins and players can try to see how many times they can tap their phone screen in a time frame of 18 seconds, while they listen to audio of thunderous applause and gaze upon an image of Xi standing before a crowd in the Great Hall of the People.

Upon completion of the game, the player can invite his friends to play along with him and even compete with him.

[related_story]

More than one billion claps

The play count, or the number of claps that Xi has "received", has since reached more than 1.24 billion times.

Tencent, which also runs messaging service WeChat, was one of several Chinese tech companies fined by authorities in China last month for failing to adhere to internet regulations. The Shenzhen-headquartered company was fined the "maximum" amount, regulators said.

According to the news site What's on Weibo, the game link now redirects to the Tencent News site themed around the 19th Party Congress through desktop. On mobile, the game still works,

You can try out the interactive propaganda game by clicking this link on a mobile device.

Top image via 199case.com

Here are some totally unrelated but equally interesting stories:

HDB things we are so used to now but will probably not miss in 10 years’ time

Which of these cool young Singaporeans would you want your kid to grow up to be?