COLDSKY.CN – A Tianjin-based partnership company of Xinhuanet, website of China’ s official Xinhua News Agency, has made strategic investment into pearvideo.com, an online short video platform.
Insiders said Xinhuanet plans to take advantage of content production network and technology of the Beijing-based Weiran company, owned fully by Li Ruigang’s Shanghai Pear Video Internet Technology, to “tell the story of China in details.”
The investment followed the much earlier move of people.cn, the listed unit of People’s Daily, to own 4.01 percent of the share, making the platform further backed up by heavyweight state media.
Launched with 500 million yuan from Li Ruigang’s China Media Capital, Pear Video raised 167 million yuan from early investor peope.cn in 2017, and then 617 million yuan from Tencent and Baidu in 2018.
With the input of China’s state-media outlets, Pear Video is considered to be in the ‘national team’ category, meaning it is more ready than other platforms to cope with impacts of content regulation policy.
Following is a rough comparison of Pear Video and ixigua.com, the video website of ByteDance
China’s regulators have continued the campaign against the spread of “vulgar, pornographic, or violent content” on live streaming platforms. The National Radio and Television Administration also issued a directive in August last year (http://www.nrta.gov.cn/art/2019/8/19/art_113_47132.html) , calling for a high-quality development. For example, it urges efforts to promote China’s TV series and documentaries abroad and create more content showing Chinese values and also in line with international communication practices. In February, Xinhua reported more efforts to curb illegal activities on the Internet, prohibiting online users and platforms from engaging in cyber violence and fabrication.
Less investment into online video sector
Data from itjuzi.com showed investment into the video and livestreaming sector generally declined rapidly from around 11.8 billion yuan in 2016 to about 1.6 billion yuan this year.
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