(Photo: CGTN)

After months of jabs on Chinese social media, Tencent finally took Toutiao, a news aggregation platform, to court on June 1 for trying to damage the company's reputation. Tencent is asking for compensation of one yuan (0.16 US dollars) and an apology.

Rather than giving in, Toutiao returned the favor the following day, filing a complaint against Tencent for "unfair competition" and asking for 90 million yuan (about 14 million US dollars) in economic losses.

Tencent claims that Toutiao and its short video app Douyin (called TikTok overseas) have been on a campaign to denigrate the company, including disseminating articles, videos and statements that are disparaging of Tencent. The conglomerate is also accusing Toutiao of deliberately modifying headlines and tampering with sources to harm Tencent's reputation. 

Citing an article about the harmful effects of video games on children, Tencent's public relations director Zhang Jun said the aggregator pushed this article, because it made it seem that Tencent was indifferent to the negative side effects. 

Along the same lines, in an indictment shared with The Paper, Toutiao says that Tencent is manipulating users' access to its content on Tencent's QQ space. The aggregator claims that Tencent is intercepting or blocking users from accessing its content. 

According to a recent report, Douyin's active user base is more than 100 million, with each user spending an average of 52 minutes on the app. The app also boasts a retention rate of more than 40 percent, roughly the same retention rate as gaming and social networking – two spaces that Tencent currently dominates.