At 20, Yuan Guihua, who flunked her college entrance exam, is an Internet celebrity. It started with a simple video that gained her nearly 1 million views.

The young woman from Guizhou Province, southwest China, opened an account on Kuaishou, a short video app also known as Kwai, and posted a video of her picturesque but impoverished village. To her surprise, it was seen by thousands of people and when she posted more videos of herself ploughing, picking vegetables and fruits, and chopping up firewood, many people became interested in the vegetables and fruits she grew organically, without using pesticides and chemical fertilizers.

Yuan began to promote green agricultural products online and taught other villagers to grow specialties and sell them online through the app. Today, she has over 3 million followers on Kuaishou.

Yuan's case exemplifies the popularity of such videos in recent years.

A booming sector

The short video industry experienced explosive growth in 2017, with its market value reaching 5.73 billion yuan ($856 million), up 184 percent. It is estimated that the figure will hit 30 billion yuan ($4.48 billion) by 2020.

There are several ways for short video posters to make a profit: from advertisements, virtual gifts sent by fans which can be converted into cash, selling products online or charging viewers for the content.

Platforms featuring video sharing have already become a new route for rural residents to escape poverty since many rural areas have various resources and beautiful landscapes but lack marketing knowledge and distribution channels.

Some of the main video sharing platforms such as Douyin, also known as TikTok, and Kuaishou have launched campaigns cooperating with local governments to help some rural residents out of poverty. In the past year, over 16 million vloggers gained income on Kuaishou, of which 3.4 million people came from areas in poverty but with rich resources.

Douyin even launched a special project to generate tourism by training local people how to shoot and share videos on Douyin and providing them with free ad traffic.

According to the China Internet Audio-Visual Products Development Report published by the China Netcasting Services Association (CNSA) in November 2018, the number of short video users reached 594 million by June 2018, accounting for 74.1 percent of all Internet users in China. Young people use short videos more, with over 80 percent of those under 29 using short video platforms.

The market has become more mature as the content has become more diversified. In 2017, the most watched short videos were entertainment-related while in 2018 their popularity dropped.

There are over 100 short video platforms and these have become more specialized, focusing on different areas such as finance and sports. Short news video platforms are also thriving and have become the entry point for traditional media such as TV stations to enter the short video market.

According to the Report on Short Video Users 2018-2019 released by research firm CSM on February 21, people watch short videos primarily for relaxation and entertainment, then for getting information and knowledge, and finally, for social contact and sharing content. Young short video watchers and makers typically suffer from loneliness and anxiety.

Zhang Zhian, Dean of the School of Communication and Design, Sun Yat-sen University in south China's Guangdong Province, said on one hand, short videos have enabled Internet users to express themselves, giving full play to their personalities; on the other hand they have filled up Internet users' fragmented spare time and satisfied their spontaneous needs for audio-visual products.

In addition to web celebrities, many entertainment stars have also opened short video platform accounts. Xie Na, a famous hostess with Hunan TV, registered an account on Kuaishou last year and posted videos of herself running, eating and singing. Her first video was viewed more than 60 million times, received 4 million likes and over 430,000 comments, and she had over 15 million fans within a month.

Chen Jiamin, a university student in Dalian, northeast China's Liaoning Province, spends nearly an hour watching short videos every day. The 19-year-old likes watching videos on tourism, pets, cooking, handicraft making and painting.

"When I watch a video of others at a tourist site, I jot down the names of the site and the hotel so that I can go there in future. I learned to cook through short videos and made several dishes during the winter vacation, which proved to be very successful. It's very useful," Chen said.

However, not everyone is a fan. Liu Yang, a foreign company employee in Beijing, said he seldom watches short videos except those on pets.

"Many short videos are vulgar, going too far to attract viewers. They are also too short to contain enough information, which means they are not of high quality. Moreover, it's a waste of time and I would rather watch a movie," he said. "Those who use short video apps are mostly younger people and I can hardly understand their fashion."

Content management

In spite of the rapid growth, the industry is also plagued by problems such as vulgar content, pornography and piracy.

Last year, a teen who had a baby at the age of 17 and her boyfriend attracted over 45 million followers on Kuaishou. Subsequently, several teens around the same age also announced they were pregnant and it became a fashion on Kuaishou to be pregnant at such an early age. In China the legal age for marriage for women is 20.

As a result, the Cyberspace Administration of China ordered Kuaishou to ban the teen's account and not allow her to register a new one in the future.

On January 9, the CNSA published a regulation for online short video platforms, which stipulates that users have to register using their real names and all short videos have to be examined by the platforms before they are streamed.

Nearly two dozen categories have been labeled as vulgar, including those that damage the national image and ethnic and regional unity, pornography and videos regarding extramarital affairs. People posting such contents face a one-year, three-year or permanent ban depending on the severity of the case.

The regulation also seeks to protect original content by prohibiting short video platforms from streaming segments from films, TV dramas and online films and dramas.

Industry insiders say as regulation of the short video market strengthens, the growth dividend has disappeared. However, people are not likely to go off short videos as it will become more convenient to make and share them as the 5G age dawns. The heyday of short videos is yet to come.

Li Yongjian, Director of the Cybereconomy Research Department at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said following the explosive increase in the number of short video platform users, high-quality content has become key for such platforms to survive market competition.

Kuaishou started a campaign with traffic value of 500 million yuan ($73.53 million) to share with more than 500 counties in poverty in the year 2018-20, announced last September by the company. They also initiated cooperation strategies with counties by way of local training.

Wu Bingying, a college graduate, in her village, Xifeng in southeast China's Fujian Province, is one of the beneficiaries. She was chosen by Kuaishou as a rural champion due to her performance on the platform. She went back home from Beijing after the three-day training in January. The training classes included online and offline business management, online branding and how to be a rural champion to get more villagers involved.

Douyin collaborated with over 40 science and technology museums across China to popularize scientific knowledge on its platform during last year's National Science Popularization Day, observed in September.

Also, ahead of World Museum Day on May 18, seven museums in China including the National Museum of China (NMC) posted short videos of their collections on Douyin with upbeat background music which became a hit with viewers. The NMC's Douyin account had attracted over 700,000 followers by February 28.

(Li Fangfang contributed to this report)

Copyedited by Sudeshna Sarkar

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