The red fruit exploded: 20,000 short dramas were removed from the shelves

The short drama empire supported by 430 million people is beginning to change

Cover I AI Drawing

作者I Li Dongyang

Report I Li Dongyang’s circle of friends

Who would have thought that the craziest traffic harvesters on the Internet in 2026 would be a group of domineering CEOs who lose their memory, get reborn, and have flash marriages at every turn.

The Hongguo short drama is undoubtedly the most shining one among them.On November 3, QuestMobile released its latest report. In September this year, the number of users of Hongguo Short Play reached 430 million, a year-on-year increase of 82%. It surpassed Doubao, which has 419 million users, and became the second largest app under ByteDance after Douyin.

You know, Doubao is a product that Byte has focused on in the field of AI in the past two years. As a result, in terms of user scale, it was stolen by its own brother who made a short drama about Boss.

What’s even more outrageous is that in July this year, the daily active users of Hongguo’s short drama reached 168 million, exceeding the combined daily active users of the four major long-form video platforms of iQiyi, Tencent Video, Youku, and Mango TV, which totaled approximately 155 million.

The four parent video platforms combined have not achieved a single success.

In the past, we always felt that the film and television industry was a high-barrier business, requiring stars, directors, and preferably a production budget of several hundred million.

Now Hongguo has proven with facts that as long as the mother-in-law is difficult enough, the CEO is rich enough, and the heroine suffers enough injustices, it will be difficult for the audience to take their fingers off the screen.

However, just when the number of users was growing crazily, Hongguo suddenly began to put the brakes on itself.

On October 21, Hongguo announced that it would completely shut down the gold coin function before the end of December this year. Immediately afterwards, the platform concentrated on processing 20,426 low-quality and homogeneous short dramas.

While expanding crazily, it also canceled user rewards and reorganized the content ecosystem.

This short drama giant, which has thrived on free and entertaining dramas, seems to be no longer satisfied with the way it has been played in the past.

If the development of China’s Internet over the years were made into a TV series, Hongguo would probably be the male protagonist who was still setting up a stall at the entrance of the village in the first two episodes, but in the third episode he has acquired the entire business empire.

In 2023, the Hongguo short drama will be officially launched. Although the short drama market at that time was already bustling, the mainstream gameplay was still paid to unlock. Hongguo did the opposite and directly pushed the free model to the forefront. There is no need to recharge or open a membership. You can watch dozens or hundreds of episodes at will. The platform realizes commercialization through advertising, and also uses gold coin rewards to attract users to watch the series and sign in.

For users, this gameplay has almost no understanding cost. What’s more, behind Hongguo is ByteDance’s traffic ecosystem.

I came across a story about a feud between a wealthy family on Douyin, and when I saw the heroine being kicked out, I could jump to the red fruit page in the next second and continue to follow the drama. The plot can be interrupted, but the emotions cannot be interrupted.

As a result, Hongguo’s user base began to rocket. QuestMobile data shows that in September 2024, Hongguo’s monthly active users were 122 million; in September 2025, it increased to 236 million; by September 2026, it had reached 430 million.

The biggest headache for Hongguo among its peers is not the number of users, but its competition for users’ time.

The latest report shows that in September 2026, the net increase in the total usage time of the short drama video App industry reached 13.329 billion hours, while the total usage time of the traditional online video industry decreased by 1.38 billion hours during the same period.

What’s even more heartbreaking is that the short drama also knows how to capture human nature.

A traditional TV series might use ten episodes to set up a conflict, but a short drama would like to complete marriage, divorce, revenge, and inheritance of family property in the first three minutes.

The logic can be relaxed a little, but the emotional value must be enough. Don’t watch the audience complain about the outrageous plot. When they really watch it, they often take it more seriously than anyone else.

On October 21st, Hongguo announced that it would adjust the gold coin function: it plans to no longer provide gold coin rewards to new users from November 1st, and it will be completely offline for all users before December 31st.

what does that mean? At least it shows that the platform is beginning to re-examine the necessity of exchanging cash incentives for user activity.

The traffic brought by subsidies and the traffic retained by content are, after all, two different businesses.

However, eliminating gold coins is only the first step. On October 27, Hongguo issued another announcement to focus on handling 20,426 micro-short dramas with low-quality and homogeneous problems, focusing on the deliberate exaggeration of contradictions, batch reskinning of plots, and highly similar characters.

This matter is somewhat darkly humorous in the short drama industry.

What made short dramas so popular in the past were precisely those exaggerated conflicts and highly mature plot routines.

Today the president loses his memory, tomorrow the wealthy family recognizes his relatives, and the day after tomorrow the son-in-law counterattacks. Change the title of the play, change the actors, and the audience will know what will happen without even reading the introduction.

These models have lowered the threshold for content production and helped the industry rapidly expand supply. However, when more and more creators begin to copy the same successful formula, problems will arise.

The audience felt fresh after watching the first part, and still nodded after watching the tenth part. After watching the hundredth part, they could even read the villain’s next line for him.

Moreover, the larger the platform, the harder it is to avoid this problem.

For a small platform with only tens of millions of users, it may be possible to maintain growth by relying on certain popular themes. But when the number of users reaches 430 million, and audiences of different ages and aesthetics flock in, it is obviously not enough to just slap the boss in the face.

Hongguo must allow more types of content to gain living space. After all, the challenge Hongguo faces now is not just how to attract users, but how to keep hundreds of millions of users here.

But the rise of Hongguo is changing the rules of the game for the entire film and television industry.

In the past, the biggest competitive advantages of long video platforms were copyrights, celebrities and production capabilities.

In contrast, the biggest advantage of short plays is that they are fast. Once the subject matter is approved, production can be quickly organized; what users like can be adjusted in time; if a certain work is not effective, it will not drag down the entire content platform.

Moreover, as AI technology enters the short drama production process, there is room for further improvement in the efficiency of script creation, screen production and even post-processing.

According to previous reports from Blue Whale Finance, Hongguo has adjusted its cooperation policies for some AI short drama scripts and reduced the guaranteed amounts for different levels of scripts. Some workers face more uncertain revenue expectations.

This is also the inevitable side of the platform becoming bigger.When the platform can gather huge traffic, more and more production companies, screenwriters and actors will actively flock in. The content supply is becoming more and more abundant, and the competition is naturally becoming more and more fierce.

For creators, the most dangerous thing may not be that Hongguo no longer guarantees certain projects, but that the hit formula that has been tried and tested in the past is starting to become less and less valuable.

Hongguo’s current transformation is essentially looking for a new balance: it must not only maintain the traffic advantage brought by the free model, but also improve the quality of content, and at the same time allow content producers to make money.

What really deserves attention is not just the red fruit itself. In the past two decades, China’s Internet has created many traffic miracles. Search, e-commerce, short video, every large-scale migration of user attention will redistribute the wealth of an industry.

For ordinary consumers, content that can make them relax, happy, and emotionally satisfied is the reason to continue to open it.

For the entire content industry, Hongguo is both a successful example and a warning.

When everyone starts chasing the same traffic password, the platform that comes out first must be the first to find the next way to play.

430 million users is the report card Hongguo has delivered in the past three years.