The Social Media Landscape of China in 2023

In the pre-pandemic time, the Chinese social media app WeChat was the most widely used social app in China and has been the No. 1 choice of marketing platform for Kiwis who want to do business with Chinese. 

In post-pandemic year 2023, WeChat remains the most widely used social app for Chinese, with a monthly active user of 1.3 billion, which equals to 93% of the Chinese population.  

More interestingly, Tencent has launched WeChat Channels in 2020, following the global social media trend of moving towards video, especially shorter and more immersive video, and more interactive live streaming. As a strategic move to fill up the gap in the WeChat content ecosystem – which was dominated by image and text with WeChat Official Account for almost a decade, the significance of WeChat Channels cannot be overlooked.  

However, even it seems that with WeChat Channels, WeChat OA and WeChat mini apps, the sales cycle can be driven from the start to the end seamlessly within the WeChat ecosystem, there are other fast growing social media platforms in China cutting a slice of the cake.  

Market scale vs. Growth rate?  

Although WeChat and Weibo still dominate the Chinese market by number of users, Douyin (Chinese version of TikTok), Xiaohongshu, Zhihu and Bilibili have much faster growth of user numbers. 

Among them, Xiaohongshu seems to be the fastest growing social media network, with an annual growth rate of 44.93% from 2020 to 2021, followed by Douyin which has a growth rate of 42.86%.  

In the same period, both WeChat and Weibo only have a growth rate lower than 10%.  

Women or Men?  

Just as Pinterest is always known for having more female than male users – women make up more than 60% of Pinterest’s global audience, do you ever wonder if there is a close alternative to Pinterest in these Chinese social media networks?  

The answer is YES.  

Xiaohongshu, a lifestyle focused social media network, has been dominated by female users, who accounts to 69% of its total audience; whereas Bilibili, a video platform for creators to share middle to long videos, has more male users than female users – the percentage of male users is 61% in Bilibili.  

In fact, apart from Douyin which has a quite balanced gender profile, with 52% male and 48% female users, all other Chinese social media networks seem to be preferred by either more men or more women.  

Top tier or lower tier cities?  

Although controversial and mainly based on economic development levels, the Chinese city tier system can be used as reference of the lifestyles and buying power of the cities’ residents. 

Among these Chinese social media networks, the classic ones like WeChat and Weibo spread over cities of all tiers quite evenly. But the newly emerging ones like Xiaohongshu, Zhihu, Douyin and Bilibi seem to have a more concentrated user base in tier 1 and new tier 1 cities, whereas Kuaishou, a short video platform, is more popular in lower tier cities than in top tier cities.  

Demographics of users?  

To build a sales funnel, your brand should always live in the place where your potential customers are. 

Whether you are targeting a specific age group of people or all ages, you will find that there is one social media network just for you.  

Weibo, Xiaohongshu and Bilibili are more popular with younger people under 35, but if your target audience is over 45, no problem. Kuaishou is the one social media network with a slightly older audience for you to consider about.  

Have a question about how to sell to Chinese customers utilizing these social media platforms? Or just want to know more about any of these networks? Contact us today or email us for a free consultation.