"As a big company we respect copyright and property rights," he said. "I can only say that there are other facts that make this more complicated."
Until recently, China's laws have generally been anything but clear on intellectual property and have made it difficult to win a suit over an alleged infringement. Such an environment may have served China's needs earlier in its industrial takeoff, when its industries were straining to catch up with the West.
The battle in the news media reflects part of a shift in the intellectual property landscape as China's growing place in world trade has brought strong pressures to rein in wholesale piracy.
Zhang Xin, a spokesman for Sohu.com, a leading portal, said: "We've signed agreements with over 1,000 traditional news organizations in China, which means that if we use their articles or reports, we definitely have reached prior agreement with them."
An awareness also seems to be taking hold that Chinese companies cannot build strong brands in an environment where copying goes unpunished.
"To enhance the country's development we are trying to encourage innovation," said Xu Chao, vice director of the National Copyright Bureau, a government agency.
"We are placing more emphasis on intellectual property and have made improvements in the law. It used to be possible for traditional media or Internet media to simply copy each other's work, but now this has been forbidden," Xu said.
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