This media company just raised millions from one of China’s oil giants

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When you think about the oil business – especially at a state-owned firm in China – “tech savvy” and “forward-thinking” aren’t the sorts of terms that usually come to mind. But perhaps they should.

Jiemian, a Chinese news media startup that reports with a focus on tech and business news for “independent thinkers,” announced over the weekend that it has raised a series B round worth US$45 million. The round was lead by Kunlun Trust, a subsidiary of PetroChina. PetroChina is China’s second-largest oil company.

For its money, PetroChina’s subsidiary gets a stake in a small but growing media company that already boasts a strong following. Jiemian claims that it already has five million daily readers and 90 million monthly unique users. It says that Kunlun’s investment is a sign that big, established firms are confident about the long-term future of high-quality content businesses.

With an extra US$45 million in its pockets Jiemian gets to continue its rapid and ambitious expansion. According to its press announcement, the company aims to have more reporters on staff than any other business-focused media outlet in China, and to be leading its next closest competitor by “double” in terms of market share. The company is training new staff to expand into new areas – right now it’s building a team that will report on China’s venture capital sector – and it will also attempt to train a new generation of reporters in addition to hiring established professionals.

Jiemian’s strategy seems questionable

Jiemian also wants to expand into new forms of media, and US$15 million of the US$45 million total raised is earmarked for an expansion into original video and audio content. The startup says it will launch three new multimedia products as early as next month.

Jiemian faces no shortage of competitors on the tech and business reporting front, of course. Many of China’s major tech companies – Sina, Tencent, Netease, etc. – operate major online news portals that cover the same subjects as Jiemian. Then there are established independent players like Techweb, old-media newspaper companies that have long-since expanded onto the web, and major media companies like Caixin. It appears Jiemian plans to beat out other players by out-spending them to build up a huge stable of journalists.

How well that strategy will work is questionable, especially given than cross-posting stories reported by other outlets is both legal and an accepted common practice in China. To “double” the competition, Jiemian will need to have the best reporting, but it will also need to change the habits of a lot of users, who routinely go to the big-name web portals or to major newspapers to get their information regardless of who the original source was.