Tudou gets its SARFT-license

Tudou via Wikipedia China's largest video hosting firm Tudou announced today it got its license from the State-Administration of Radio, Film and TV (SARFT) after a prolonged delay, so that is well worth a congratulation!
A short summary of what happened to this rather new industry that has been able to survive in the rather difficult media-landscape where private companies and the country's regulator have been at odds for a rather long time. More details you can find here.
Tudou was the last party in this market to get a license, after SARFT first wanted to turn the whole industry into a state-owned one. That intention failed and then the regulator started to issue license and industry, it could not turn around. First all but the largest three firms got their license. Only after lengthy discussion, for example on how these private companies would deal with the internal censorship that is pretty common in the traditional media, also the larger players would get their license.
I would say, this is a rather fundamental change, compared to the way the traditional media where despite many changes the ownership of the media itself is in one way or the other still in the hands of the state. While the video hosting companies are still Chinese owned - and I could not image a foreign company setting up such a media company in China at this stage - the larger and more successful ones are privately owned with a large participation of foreign VC's. While censoring the videos will remain in place, we do see here a profound change in the media industry.
SARFT, the regulatory body, wanted to have a state-owned industry and the private owners of the larger successful firm have resisted. Those larger players have won, although they have most certainly compromised on some censorship issues. But in terms of media ownership relations we see that the state acknowledges private companies can do this business better than the government itself.

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Changes in China's media industry are fast and profound, especially where it concerns the internet. At the China Speakers Bureau we have leading experts both on China's media and China's internet who can help to explain what exactly is going on. If you are interested in having speakers in this field, do get in touch with one of our global offices.

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