Fast Facts About Chinese Social Media

Ever wanted to know more about China's unique social media landscape? Here's a quick guide.

China and Chinese consumers present huge opportunities for international trade and tourism. China is already Australia's biggest and most profitable source of foreign visitors and our largest source of international students. It's also opening up to foreign companies.

The social media landscape in mainland China is different from the rest of the world. Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and Instagram are banned. Chinese corporations have developed their own apps and worked with the Chinese government to comply with their restrictions.

Engaging on local social media is necessary for organisations that want to succeed in China or gain Chinese customers. Here are some key facts about this huge and exciting topic.

Some major apps in the social media landscape

The Chinese social media landscape is enormous, with new apps being created all the time. Here's a list of 10 apps you should know about and what they do.

Baidu

Search engine like Google. Although not a social media platform, it's important to know about with over 100 million daily active users.

Douyin

What we know in English as TikTok, a short video app. Douyin has over 500 million monthly users.

Maimai

The Chinese equivalent of LinkedIn (although LinkedIn is not banned in China). Over 30 million users.

QQ

Instant messaging service with 800 million users.

Taobao

China's biggest shopping site with hundreds of millions of monthly active users.

Tencent

Beating 'China's Youtube', Youku, Tencent also offers subscription options to over-the-top (OTT) content.

WeChat Pay

A mobile payments app with 800 million users.

Weibo

An advanced version of Twitter with 462 million users.

Weixin (WeChat in English)

Functions similar to Facebook and WhatsApp with 980 million users.

Zhihu

Q and A platform like Quora, also similar to LinkedIn because professionals use it to showcase their knowledge. A total of 160+ million users.