Zhang Chaoyang says he rises at 4am, works over 10 hours a day, rejects ‘lying flat’ claim

Zhang's rebuttal is aimed less at critics than at morale inside Sohu Video, which he concedes is not profitable — an unusual admission from a founder defending his own platform. The framing matters: hours worked and personal teaching are offered as evidence of effort, not of a viable path to profitability, and that gap is the real story for a video platform competing for attention and advertiser budgets. Whether Sohu Video converts that effort into a commercial model remains the open question.