Industry growth
From 2016 to 2017, the Chinese capital market favored the domestic short video industry.
For example, Kuaishou raised $350 million in fresh funding led by mega Chinese internet firm Tencent Holdings in March 2017. Also, in September 2017, Yitiao, a Chinese online platform that offers lifestyle video content and retail services, secured $40 million in C-round financing, according to media reports.
China's short video market is at the infancy phase of rapid growth, with its initial boom starting in 2017. The number of active users on comprehensive short video platforms, for instance, had reached 403.5 million by the end of February, according to a report released by internet data analysis firm Analysys in March.
Also, the market size of the domestic short video sector stood at 5.73 billion yuan ($908 .6 million) in 2017, an increase of 184 percent on a yearly basis, and its value is likely to exceed 300 billion yuan by 2020, read a report released by consulting firm iResearch.
Experts attribute the fast growth of the domestic short video industry to the fact that people in cities across the country are now confronted with rising work and life pressures, so short videos can serve as daily entertainment and a method of stress relief.
"Watching short videos is a necessity in my daily life, as I can find and also share many interesting content on various apps," a 30-something white-collar worker surnamed Tang told the Global Times on Monday.
"I applaud the recent crackdowns on vulgar and erotic content because these platforms have many teenaged followers who may not be able to easily tell right from wrong and are likely to imitate what they watch in videos," Tang said.
China had a total of 579 million online video viewers and 422 million livestreaming viewers as of the end of 2017, according to the China Internet Network Information Center, with a large number of those being young people, especially teenagers.
Tang added that users themselves have called for regulation over inappropriate content on such platforms.
Optimized structure
The online world is suffering from a phase of contamination as more obscene content appears to becoming more popular, said Li Yi, a senior research fellow at the Internet Research Center under the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.
Li Yi told the Global Times on Sunday that "the growth prospect of the short video sector will be sound in the future after the industry's structure becomes optimized through the screening-out of vulgar and non-mainstream cultural content."
As such, more mainstream content with positive values will be uploaded to the platforms in the future, Li Yi said.
Jinri Toutiao on Monday announced that it will launch a channel on its app to ensure that traditional culture-related content becomes normalized, including classic Chinese work such as traditional paintings, arts and crafts as well as folk customs, the Guangdong-based 21st Century Business Herald newspaper reported.
As a result, Jinri Toutiao will prompt a certain network flow related to such content, according to the report.
Short video platforms are also expected to invest more in technology and manual labor to establish multiple review systems for inappropriate content, experts said.
Meanwhile, Kuaishou has been collaborating with Zhejiang University to set up new standards for the short video sector through efforts such as studying controversial domestic and foreign cases, domestic news site sohu.com reported in February.
The fates of Neihan Duanzi and other short video apps that have been closed down should urge producers to pay much more attention to regulations and autonomously help purify the online environment, experts noted.
