In a post celebrating record downloads of his short video app Douyin, founder Zhang Yiming accused Tencent's messaging service WeChat of  "plagiarising" Douyin's content.

　　在一条庆祝短视频应用抖音下载量创纪录的帖子中，抖音创始人张一鸣指责腾讯的即时通讯应用微信 “抄袭”抖音内容。

　　Tencent's Pony Ma shot back that Mr Zhang's comments were "defamatory".

　　腾讯的马化腾反击称，张一鸣的言论是“诽谤”。

　　The two companies have gone further, filing competing lawsuits against each other over content and data.

　　不光如此，两家公司还就内容和数据问题向法庭互相起诉了对方。

　　Few outside of China may have heard of Mr Zhang or his company. But the group, with its 300m-plus monthly users, is the rare start-up with a shot at challenging the country's biggest tech companies.

　　中国以外很少有人听说过张一鸣或其公司，但这家月活跃用户超过3亿的公司，是为数不多敢于挑战中国最大几家科技公司的初创企业。

　　The Douyin app was the most downloaded on Apple's iOS platform in China for the first three months of this year, according to QuestMobile, a research company.

　　研究公司贵士移动的数据显示，今年前三个月，抖音是苹果iOS平台在中国下载量最大的app。

　　But just as important, Douyin has not taken money from Tencent or Alibaba, two companies that have become Asia's biggest dealmakers through acquisitions of regional tech businesses and financial stakes in rising start-ups.

　　同样重要的是，抖音并未从腾讯或阿里巴巴获得投资。通过并购本地区科技企业以及入股新兴的初创公司，腾讯和阿里巴巴已成为亚洲最大的收购交易者。

　　Unlike traditional investors, whose sole goal is typically to secure the best return, China's big tech groups are often looking to co-opt fast-rising services into their ecosystems in a zero-sum game to dominate the internet.

　　传统投资者唯一的目标通常是确保获得最佳回报，而中国这两大科技集团往往希望在零和博弈中将迅速崛起的应用服务纳入自己的生态系统，以图在互联网占据主导地位。

　　With its vast, youthful base of users, the platform is also an advertiser's dream and a potent force in ecommerce.

　　因为拥有庞大的年轻用户群体，抖音这一平台也成为广告商的梦想之地和电子商务领域的一股强大力量。

　　"Douyin's biggest selling point is its ability to make things go viral and that has a substantial influence directing traffic to ecommerce," said Qu Kai, founder of tech investment consultancy Beijing Forty-two Chapters Technology.

　　科技投资咨询公司北京四十二章经科技有限公司创始人曲凯表示：“抖音最大的卖点在于其引爆热点的能力，这对电商流量导入具有重大影响。”

　　Douyin and Bytedance have maintained their independence largely thanks to $2.8 billion of funding from global investors such as Sequoia and Susquehanna International Group.

　　抖音与字节跳动之所以能够保持独立，很大程度上得益于来自红杉、海纳国际集团等全球投资者的28亿美元融资。

　　"[Douyin] is the biggest in social right now and one of the few major platforms that's not owned or partially owned by Tencent or Alibaba," said Ron Cao, a partner at venture capital firm Sky9 Capital and an investor in Bytedance.

　　字节跳动的投资者之一、风投公司云九资本合伙人曹大容表示，抖音是中国为数不多既不属于、也不部分属于腾讯或阿里巴巴的主要平台之一。

　　The company also has its own messaging service, allowing it to bypass its bigger rivals' chat platforms.

　　该公司还拥有自己的即时通讯服务，使其可以绕过更大竞争对手的聊天平台。

　　Douyin's growing popularity has sparked a fierce competition with Tencent, which has its own popular streaming app and blocks most Douyin videos from its ubiquitous messaging app, WeChat.

　　抖音日渐高涨的人气引发了其与腾讯的激烈竞争，后者也拥有颇受欢迎的流媒体app，并在微信中屏蔽了大部分抖音视频。

　　Alibaba and Tencent have homed in on video streaming to pull users to their platforms.

　　阿里巴巴和腾讯已经在发力视频流媒体，希望将用户吸引至自家平台。

　　China's top four short-video platforms had 582million users at the end of March, according to QuestMobile — equivalent to more than three-quarters of the country's mobile internet users.

　　贵士移动的数据显示，截至3月底，中国前四大短视频平台拥有5.82亿用户——超过了中国移动互联网用户的四分之三。

　　This has implications for the Chinese online retail sector, a market valued at Rmb7.18 trillion ($1.1trillion) in 2017, according to the country's commerce ministry.

　　这对中国在线零售行业意义重大。中国商务部的数据显示，2017年，中国在线零售市场规模估计达到7.18万亿元人民币(合1.1万亿美元)。