(Photo: CGTN)

Tencent-backed short video platform Kuaishou has bought its rival AcFun, as competition among up-and-coming Chinese social media platforms intensifies.

Confirming the deal on Tuesday, Kuaishou said that AcFun would retain its brand and management while receiving technological and financial support. The financial details of the size of the deal were not specified.

AcFun was established in 2007, and at its peak was one of China’s most popular video and cartoon streaming websites.

However, because of financial pressure, content regulations and the emergence of new platforms like Kuaishou, iQiyi and Tik Tok (known as Douyin in Chinese), AcFun saw its average daily users collapse from 700,000 to 100,000 in the past year, according to data from Analysys.

As AcFun faced falling into obscurity with financial losses of 100 million yuan (15.5 million US dollars) in 2017, one of its biggest rivals Bilibili launched a 400-million-US-dollar initial public offering on New York’s Nasdaq exchange in March.

A funding round in January saw Kuaishou valued at around 18 billion US dollars, with Chinese tech giant Tencent one of its biggest financial backers. In March, Tencent pumped a further 350 million US dollars into the company.

Alongside its rival Tik Tok, Kuaishou is developing a short video sector that could be worth as much as 96.2 billion yuan (15 billion US dollars) by 2020, according to research by HIS Markit.

Citing data from QuestMobile, Caixin reported that Kuaishou’s daily active users hit 100 million last month.

Tik Tok – which is owned by Bytedance, the developer of popular news app Toutiao – was the world's most downloaded non-game app on Apple’s App Store in the first three months of this year, with estimated 45.8 million downloads, according to a study by market research firm Sensor Tower.

Beyond its huge popularity among the post-90s generation in China, Tik Tok is also the short video market leader in Thailand, Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Cambodia.

However, the rivalry between Tik Tok and Kuaishou has seen Tencent and Bytedance clash both in public and now in court. Earlier this month, Tencent launched a lawsuit against Bytedance for damaging the company’s reputation, seeking a symbolic one yuan in compensation, along with a public apology.

Bytedance responded with a counter-lawsuit, accusing Tencent of “unfair competition,” and demanding 90 million yuan (14 million US dollars) in compensation along with a public apology. Both cases were accepted by a Beijing court on June 1.

Earlier in May, Tencent founder Pony Ma and Bytedance CEO Zhang Yiming had a public argument on (Tencent-owned app) WeChat, with Zhang accusing Ma of blocking Douyin videos on his platforms. Ma responded by calling the accusations defamation.