Television channels and the online media need not necessarily be rivals. They can cooperate in an ever-growing market.

At least, this was the message at a forum organized by the Communication University of China in Beijing last week.

The co-host of the forum, Toutiao, which means "headline" in Chinese, one of the country's most popular smartphone news applications, revealed its ambition to work more closely with the traditional media.

"We're distributors of news," says Zhao Tian, vice-president of Toutiao. "Television will help us to build a win-win ecology for the industry."

Toutiao, which was set up in 2012, claims to have 310 million users, 30 million of them active daily. It promotes individualized content for different users according to an analysis of their viewing preferences. More than 20,000 articles are read via the platform every day.

More than 400 television, TV channels and programs have opened accounts on Toutiao to promote their content, but Zhao says that this is only the start.

A successful example of the cooperation in recent times was Sept 3's military parade in Beijing commemorating the 70th anniversary of victory in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-45).

China Central Television released its short videos, which were not broadcast on TV, via Toutiao's platform. The videos were viewed 80 million times in a single day.

"There is still huge potential to produce short videos in China," says Zhao.

"China's video websites mainly focus on long videos, such as soap operas or reality shows.

"Some news videos may qualify to be broadcast on national television, but they could be useful to the community. This could encourage more platforms like Toutiao to mushroom in the near future."