Video Hosting in China Online video is a massive and rapidly growing industry. Video streaming rose https://bit.ly/2I21JRl72.4% between Q1 2018 and Q1 2019 alone. The video streaming market is predicted to be worth $70.5https://bit.ly/2Mjm6hp billion by 2021. And https://bit.ly/2OF1aUayoung https://bit.ly/2OF1aUapeople are driving that growth—a sure sign that this trend will continue. Over the past decade, the number of people accessing the Internet in China has increased five-fold. However, it remains quite difficult for companies to deliver video in China. There are political and technical reasons for this challenge. But current barriers to China video delivery can also be overcome. This eBook will explore the topic of https://bit.ly/2YLq98dvideo https://www.dacast.com/video-hosting-china/hosting in China. We’ll start by examining the business-case for China video streaming. Next, we’ll dive into the challenges and problems that face businesses that choose to deliver video in China. Finally, we’ll present solutions and arrange of options to gain access to the China market. The Opportunity: Why You Video viewing growth in China is similarly stunning, with an estimated 37%https://bit.ly/2yEfeTd annual Should Be Delivering Videos https://www.dacast.com/webinars/everything-you-need-to-know-about-delivering-video-into-china/growth in the number of viewers. In 2007, a mere https://www.statista.com/statistics/279537/number-of-online-video-users-in-china/160 million Chinese had watched in China https://bit.ly/33dJORyvideos online. By 2014, this figure had tripled No matter what your industry, there may be to 433 million viewers. According to the a good reason to consider delivering CNNIC, https://www.statista.com/statistics/236062/users-of-online-video-portals-in-china-by-age/more than half of online video your videos into China. Work in the https://www.statista.com/statistics/236062/users-of-online-video-portals-in-china-by-age/ viewers in China are in their teens and 20s. entertainment or sports industries? China Given this youth-dominant viewer base, we represents a massive untapped audience can expect growth to continue to rise in both sectors. Involved in enterprise exponentially in coming years. business? Chinese industry is an increas- ingly large part of the global economy. Let’s take a look now at a few of the other reasons to consider video hosting in China. Audience The first reason to consider China as important for video delivery is due to its massive size. China is home to 1.42https://bit.ly/2y6gygS billion https://bit.ly/2y6gygSpeople. In fact, China has the largest population of any country in the world. And about https://bit.ly/2Z6HYTc900 million of these individuals are internet users. These current numbers speak to the existing relevance of doing video host- ing and streaming to viewers in China. The growth in internet access in China is explosive as well. A full https://www.dacast.com/webinars/everything-you-need-to-know-about-delivering-video-into-china/40 million Chinese https://www.dacast.com/webinars/everything-you-need-to-know-about-delivering-video-into-china/people are coming online for the first time https://www.dacast.com/webinars/everything-you-need-to-know-about-delivering-video-into-china/every year. That’s the equivalent of nearly 15% of the entire population of the United States and more than 66% of the entire population of the UK. Revenue Video can help to facilitate and enhance trainings, conferences, sales, product Another reason to consider video hosting releases and demos, partnerships, and in China is revenue. With a large audi- all sorts of other business outcomes. And ence comes massive potential revenue in all of these cases, access to a reliable opportuni-ties. Online video revenue in China video hosting service is essential. China alone is expected to approach https://bit.ly/2YOkMFf$18.2 https://bit.ly/2YOkMFfbillion USD in 2019, with annual growth Trade and Government rates of more than https://bit.ly/2YOkMFf30 percent. Larger institutions may also have a need There are a variety of different ways to for China video delivery. Foreign govern- monetize video content online. Nearly https://bit.ly/2YOkMFfhalf ments,international banks, trade associa- of current video revenue comes from tions, and other institutions all require adverti-sing, which is expected to be worth modern video tools. Like businesses, these more than $10 billion USD by 2020. About a groups require training, outreach, internal third of total revenue comes from paid meetings, and more. Video is often the content (e.g., subscriptions model, tip jar, preferred tool for this sector, which makes and pay-per-view approaches). the challenges of a China video delivery a real factor. Therefore, native China video Business 2 Business delivery is essentia for many of these institutions.The Challenges with China Video Hosting Not many people outside of Reaching the large Chinese population is China, and more broadly east Asia, are shar- tempting from a B2C (Buness-to- Consum- ing video zcontent within China. There are er) standpoint. However, many businesses many different reasons for this reality. In are instead interested in serving the this section, we’ll review four of the main companies that exist in China. This B2B challenges that companies face when (Business-to-Business) approach can be seeking to deliver video to China. lucrative, reliable, and a great business model. In fact, depending on the measure, Content Blocking and China may now be the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Chinaworld’s largest 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Chinaeconomy. We can see this born out in the Regulations massive and growing businesses—Alibaba, https://www.dacast.com/blog/business-video-hosting-china/ Huawei, Baidu, Foxconn, China Mobile—that The first type of barrier to delivering content lead the Chinese economy. https://www.dacast.com/blog/business-video-hosting-china/inside China involves a variety of content blocking rules and regulations. These companies need services and products of various sorts, including video First, be aware that the central Communist hosting and https://www.dacast.com/streaming-solutions/streaming solutions. government in China restricts access to foreign websites, apps, and services based on its conception of “https://bit.ly/33w1Qytinternet sovereignty.” These companies need services and products of various sorts, including video hosting and streaming solutions. Essentially, the government maintains that YouTube, Vimeo, IBM Cloud Video, Twitter, China should be able to exclude content WhatsApp, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, that could be damaging to the people and Google, Wikipedia, and Facebook are all values of China. blocked in China. Many other popular plat- forms, such as news sites, are banned sites This banned contenthttps://bit.ly/1gPhewr includes media the as well. Chinese government deems as immoral, anti-government, religious, military, and so The results of this blocking are significant on. In short, it blocks content that falls into for those of us who live outside China. these categories. China also blocks YouTube, China has its own equivalents to pornography, file sharing, and dark web all of these services. But using them from sites, as well as VPN services and other outside China can pose a challenge. And methods of circumventing censorship. In for companies and organizations using addition, content relating to homosexuality, video to reach people in China, the Great gambling, Tibet, and much more is blocked Firewall repre-sents an even large barrier. in China. Most of these categories won’t apply to businesses, but it is important to know which kinds of material the Chinese government deems anti-communist and will block. Therefore, it’s important for foreigners to understand and know how this policy works. To operate in China, foreign busi- nesses have to adhere to these regulations. 2 The Great Firewall of China Collectively, the regulations and content censorship of the internet in China is known as “The Great Firewall of China.” Within China, this firewall is part of what is known as Thehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Shield_Project Golden Shield Project. The results of this blocking are significant for those of us who live outside China. Extremely Slow Video Mainland vs. Hong Kong 3 4 Loading Speeds and Server Locations The Great Firewall has another ramification; Another factor that impacts internet video it tends to slow down content that comes viewing in China is that most video delivered from outside main land China. In part, this is there comes from as far away as Seattle, due to the fact that passing through the Australia, Singapore, Los Angeles, or New firewalls and other content filters takes time. Zealand. This leads to slow video loading Bouncing around a variety of servers and and response times. Servers located in these content delivery networks increases https://bit.ly/2OVwFcLlatency far-flung locations have more intermediary and adds to loading time. points through which to pass en route to China. Overall, this process can create an unreliable viewing experience. The impact of the Great Firewall on content availability can be unpredictable. Some- Some companies try to bypass these issues times content will simply go offline. In other by hosting from within Hong Kong. Under cases, a service is available for a long while, China’s “one country, two systems” policy, and then suddenly it’s blocked. Sometimes Hong Kong has a greater degree of a site will be unblocked, blocked again, and infor-mation freedom and video companies then unblocked yet again—all in the span of can function near-normally there. However, a few days. content delivered from Hong Kong still has to pass through the Great Firewall.