China's growing e-sports market creates huge talent demand

BEIJING -- E-sports players are in huge demand in China as the market is expected to expand steadily in the next few years, an industrial report showed.

Less than 15 percent of such positions have been filled, with the demand for e-sports professionals at two million in five years, according to a report released by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security.

E-sports, which developed from computer games, are acts of intellectual confrontation between players with electronic devices as sports equipment.

China has about 500,000 e-sports gamers concentrated in big cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Xi'an, Chengdu and Chongqing.

The country's e-sports sector was worth about 94.05 billion yuan (about $13.73 billion) last year and is predicted to top 135 billion next year.