China's video portals catch audiences in web

Hong Kong pop star Edison Chan in the poster for Blind Spot. Provided to China Daily

As the government steps up its fight against piracy, the number of China's video websites has decreased from about 300 to only a dozen. The price of licensing a local show has increased accordingly - by tenfold to as much as 1 million yuan for a hit show.

More pressure comes from the fact that a TV show is usually licensed to multiple online platforms, so it's hard for a single website to maintain audience loyalty.

So its more cost-effective for video websites to produce their own programs, a task even more urgent after traditional broadcaster Hunan TV launched a new-media platform called Mango TV to carry its own shows.

The notion that Internet-produced series can be widely accepted by Chinese audiences gained credence with Diors Man, a Sohu.com production that parodies pop culture and topical social issues with cheeky humor. The show's three seasons have been viewed more than 700 million times.

After adopting a "dream works" strategy in 2013, Sohu will reportedly invest twice as much this year and aims to raise the view counts of its self-made content fourfold. The content will include full-length plays and reality shows made by local talent and top South Korean production teams.

Youku Tudou said it will invest 300 million yuan ($48 million) in making its own programs. Tencent Video is planning joint efforts with the country's top production companies to adapt the most popular Web fiction into 500 episodes of Internet plays.