Whether the 30 percent cap referred to the number of titles of TV shows or the number of show’s episodes is yet unclear. Neither Youku nor Sohu responded to requests for comment.

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“The regulator has been collecting data about episodes of different online programs from major video sites for quite a while,” the Journal quoted one executive of a domestic video site as saying. “The agency has done quite a lot of homework for this policy.”

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The new restriction could have some impact on the business models of sites such as Youku, Sohu and Tencent, since these sites usually pay for the rights of the TV shows, stream them at no cost to viewers and profit from advertisements.

Foreign TV shows take up more than half of the video content on Chinese video sites, according to a report by Chinese state media. “Sherlock” from the U.K. and “House of Cards” from the U.S. have topped China’s must-watch lists. Sohu, a major video-streaming site in China, has drawn more than 120 million views a month streaming “The Big Bang Theory.”

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Questions about intensified government control over online video contents have been raised since Chinese audience who went online to watch “The Big Bang Theory,” “The Good Wife,” “NCIS” and “The Practice” in April but only found an announcement saying that “the episode cannot be watched due to government policy.”

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Most complaints on social media came from the Chinese audience of “The Big Bang Theory,” a sitcom whose main characters are nerdy science guys.

There is a demographic reason why fictitious nerds from CalTech have charmed millions of Chinese viewers, Liz Carter wrote in Foreign Policy. One of China’s popular words in 2013 was “diaosi,” a term used to describe poor and girlfriend-less geeks. While it may seem odd that young Chinese are willingly to label themselves as “diaosi” — sometimes translated as losers — it actually reflects a phenomenon of Chinese youth blaming the lack of material, romantic and professional success on the country’s gender imbalance, high cost of urban living and low social mobility.

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After the show was removed from online video sites, many have questioned if the Chinese regulators removed the show to gain profits by directing viewers to the state-run channels from online sites. Only days after “The Big Bang Theory” was taken down, the state-run broadcast channel CCTV began to air “Game of Thrones” and confirmed that the channel is in the process of translating and editing a “Green edition” of the “The Big Bang Theory” that will not contain any inappropriate scenes.