What was announced or recorded
On 25 April 2023 the board of China Online Group Publishing Co., Ltd (Shenzhen ChiNext: 300364, 中文在线) resolved to restructure its US subsidiary Crazy Maple Studio, founded in California in July 2016. The filing, posted to the exchange's disclosure system on 26 April 2023, cuts China Online's voting rights in Crazy Maple from 50.90 to 47.81 percent by giving Crazy Maple's own management four of its seven board seats, while China Online's ownership stake stays at 49.16 percent. Losing board and shareholder-meeting control means Crazy Maple leaves China Online's consolidated statements from that point, moving to equity-method accounting as an associate instead.
What the documents establish
The filing gives Crazy Maple's last consolidated figures: full-year 2022 revenue of RMB366.1 million and net profit of RMB7.6 million, plus unaudited first-quarter 2023 revenue of RMB91.3 million and net profit of RMB2.1 million, and estimates the deconsolidation will move roughly RMB50 million through China Online's own profit line as a non-recurring item. It names Crazy Maple's business as an 'interactive visual reading platform' called Chapters, offered in 16 languages, alongside separate products Spotlight, Kiss and My Escape. The word 'ReelShort' does not appear in the document. That link has to be made from outside it: ReelShort's own App Store listing, as retrieved on 16 September 2026, quotes a Time100 profile stating 'Crazy Maple Studio is quietly changing the streaming game with its ReelShort app', though the listing's own publisher field names a different entity, New Leaf Publishing, Inc.
Announced versus delivered
What is delivered here is a governance and accounting change, not a business update: the filing records a shift in voting control and its bookkeeping consequence, not ReelShort's performance. What it leaves unresolved is post-2023 visibility. Once deconsolidated, Crazy Maple's results feed China Online's investment income at most, not standalone revenue, at the point in ReelShort's history, 2023 into 2024, when its audience is widely reported to have grown fastest.
What to watch
This is an editorial flag, not something the filing states: since China Online now holds a minority-voting, equity-accounted stake rather than a controlling one, a claim that its filings 'show ReelShort's revenue' should be checked against whether the figure is Crazy Maple's own, last available for early 2023, or China Online's investment income, a materially different number.
- Does a financial figure attributed to China Online or 'ReelShort's parent' predate or postdate the April 2023 deconsolidation, since the accounting basis changed at that point?
- Does a source naming Crazy Maple Studio as ReelShort's operator match the entity, New Leaf Publishing, Inc., that the app's own store listing names as publisher?
- Has China Online disclosed the current value of, or income from, its 49.16 percent stake in Crazy Maple in any exchange filing since April 2023?
The filing is a reminder that a listed parent's exchange disclosures and an app's own store listing can each be genuine and still not use the same company name for the same product, a gap a reader has to close by hand rather than assume away.
Sources & evidence
static.cninfo.com.cn · Official source
Source date: 26 Apr 2023 · Checked: 16 Sept 2026
- States the voting-rights change, board reshuffle, deconsolidation, Crazy Maple's last consolidated revenue and profit figures, and its named product lines (Chapters, Spotlight, Kiss, My Escape), without mentioning ReelShort.
apps.apple.com · Official source
Source date: Not stated by source · Checked: 16 Sept 2026
- Living app-store listing, as retrieved 16 September 2026, that names the publisher as New Leaf Publishing, Inc. and quotes press coverage identifying Crazy Maple Studio as the company behind the app.