1 . Launched in 2010, iQiyi has grown used to the foreign press calling it “the Netflix of China.” Not the worst nickname, given the video-streaming pioneer's success. But Gong Yu, iQiyi's founder and boss, insists that his firm is more accurately _________ as “Netflix plus.” A bold claim for a loss-making business worth one-fifteenth as much as America's (cash-generating) entertainment powerhouse with a market value of $214 bn. Still, Mr Gong has a_________.

Like Netflix, iQiyi offers customers a catalogue of licensed and original content. Unlike Netflix, which relies almost entirely on subscription fees, iQiyi has _________ revenue streams. “Membership fees,” which start from 19.8 yuan ($2.87) a month, _______ just over half of iQiyi's 7.4 bn yuan in revenues in the second quarter. The rest came mainly from an online store (which sells “entertainment-related merchandise), mobile-gaming, an e-book business and advertisements: iQiyi operates a “freemium” model which allows users to stream some content free of charge _________ that they agree to watch ads.

Conveniently for iQiyi, which does little business outside its home market, Netflix is blocked in China, under laws that _________ a lot of foreign content. But that is not to say that China is free from the streaming wars of the sort between Netflix and rivals like Disney, HBO and NBC Universal.

Far from it. Mr Gong is _________ Tencent Video, which overtook iQiyi at the end of June with 114m video subscribers to iQiyi's 105m (see chart) . Mr Gong's firm lost 14m subscribers in the most recent quarter while Tencent Video, which also runs a freemium model and_________subscribers 20 yuan a month, added Zin. Tencent Video offers a richer selection of English-language _________, including hit television series like Chernobyl and Silicon Valley. More important, the rivalry between Tencent Video and iQiyi is the war between mighty Tencent and ____________ Baidu, a search firm that is iQiyi's majority owner.

____________, as Westerners who pay for a few video subscriptions can prove, streaming is not a zero-sum game. Gigi Zhou of BOCOM International, a broker, believes the Chinese market will soon be big enough to ____________ both iQiyi and Tencent Video, which also has yet to make money. Ms Zhou expects 400m Chinese to subscribe to video-streaming platforms by 2023, up from some 300m in 2019. So long as no new rival ____________, each firm could capture around 150m, helping them spread costs over more subscribers and so turn a profit.

Before streaming peace can break out, iQiyi faces another fight. On August 13th it said it was under ____________ by America's Securities and Exchange Commission after a short-seller accused it of cooking sales data, a charge it ____________. If found guilty, it may have to delist from New York's Nasdaq exchange. The firm's stable share price implies that investors' faith in battle-hardened Mr Gong remains unshaken.