China's video portals catch audiences in web

Top video portals move into creation and production.

What Chinese video websites have achieved in the past few years is revolutionary. By licensing eye-opening overseas content and offering full coverage of domestic entertainment, they have drawn Chinese audiences, especially the well-educated young, away from television to mobile devices.

As the number of China's online video viewers passed 450 million, nearly half of the entries on Baidu's list of 50 most -watched TV series in the first quarter this year were not broadcast on television. Leading video website iQIYI.com is visited through as many as 130 million mobile devices daily.

"The quantitive change has truly led to qualitative change. And we call this qualitative change independence," iQIYI's CEO Gong Yu said in April during the company's annual marketing conference in Hainan.

To rely less on programs made by others, iQIYI is speeding up efforts to make its own.

It has a new production company with three studios led by industry veterans including former CCTV host and producer Ma Dong. Last month the website announced a long-term plan to produce an array of Internet series and entertainment shows.