Foreign brands always ask me the same question: “Philip, which Chinese social media platform should I be on?”
My honest answer: all of them, if you have Alibaba’s budget. If you don’t, you pick two, maybe three, and you pick them for the right reason, not because a competitor is there too.
Philip Chen has run over 300 digital campaigns for foreign brands in China since 2010, most of them on the platforms below. He learned which platform fits which brand the expensive way, so this guide is the shortcut version.
China’s social media does not work like the West. Apps here are not just feeds, they are super-apps: you scroll, you pay, you book a doctor, you search for a product before you buy it, sometimes you even end a relationship, all inside the same app. If you plan your China social strategy like you plan Instagram or Facebook, you will waste money in the first month.
Stop asking “which platform is best.” Ask “what job does it do.”
This is the mistake I see most: a brand picks a platform because it’s the biggest, then wonders why it isn’t selling. Every major Chinese platform does one job well. WeChat keeps the customers you already have. Xiaohongshu (小红书, “Little Red Book”) is where people search before they buy. Douyin (抖音, the Chinese TikTok) sells to people who weren’t even looking. Weibo (微博) is for noise, good or bad. Bilibili (哔哩哔哩, usually just “B站”) is for young audiences who want a real story, not a 15-second ad.
Match the job to your brand, then match your budget to the job. That’s the whole strategy. Here’s the breakdown.
WeChat (微信): keep the customers you already paid to get
China’s social network user base passed 1.11 billion people by the end of 2025, according to CNNIC, the government body that tracks internet use. WeChat carries most of that traffic, but here’s what foreign brands get wrong: WeChat is not where you find new customers cheaply anymore. It’s where you keep the ones you already found somewhere else.
Think of it as your CRM with a storefront attached. Your Official Account is the newsletter. Your Mini-Program is the shop, the loyalty card, and the booking system, all in one, and customers never leave the chat app to use it. Brands that treat WeChat as “one more place to post content” get ignored. Brands that build a private customer base inside it (what Chinese marketers call 私域流量, sīyù liúliàng, “private domain traffic”) turn a one-time buyer into someone who reorders for years.
Who it’s for: any brand that already has paying customers in China and wants them to come back, especially skincare, F&B, and anything sold on a repeat cycle. Minimum realistic budget: count on 50,000 to 80,000 RMB a year for a lean Official Account plus a simple Mini-Program store. A real CRM build with loyalty tiers and member pricing starts closer to 150,000 RMB.
The site already has 56 articles on WeChat alone, so I won’t repeat them here. Two worth reading first: how WeChat’s internal search actually ranks your account, and the current Mini-Program commerce toolkit.
Xiaohongshu (小红书): the search engine that looks like a diary
Xiaohongshu passed 350 million monthly active users in mid-2026, per data platform Qiangua, and some industry estimates put it above 400 million once you count lighter, occasional users. The exact figure moves depending on who’s counting, since Xiaohongshu doesn’t publish audited numbers the way a listed company does.
What matters more than the headcount: people type into Xiaohongshu the way they type into Google. “Best serum for dry skin 2026.” “Spanish jewelry brands worth buying.” If your product doesn’t show up in that search, in the format of real user “notes” rather than ads, you’re invisible at the exact moment someone decided to buy. This is 种草 (zhòngcǎo, literally “planting grass”), the practice of seeding genuine-feeling content until enough of it exists that a buyer trusts what they find.
Who it’s for: beauty, fashion, lifestyle, anything a consumer researches before paying, especially higher-ticket or unfamiliar foreign brands that need trust built before the first sale. Minimum realistic budget: a small monthly seeding batch of 20 to 30 KOC notes runs 30,000 to 50,000 RMB a month. Search ads on top of that add cost but shorten the time to results.
The site has 18 dedicated Xiaohongshu articles. Start with the current user and search-volume numbers and how selling directly inside the app now works.
Douyin (抖音): selling to people who weren’t shopping
Douyin’s e-commerce arm is projected to cross 4 trillion RMB in GMV in 2025, growth of roughly 30% year on year, putting it ahead of JD as China’s third-largest e-commerce channel behind Taobao and Pinduoduo. That’s not a social platform with a shop bolted on anymore. That’s a shopping mall that happens to look like a video feed.
The mechanic is called interest e-commerce: the algorithm doesn’t wait for a search, it shows you a product before you knew you wanted it, then lets you buy in the same screen via a shopping cart tag attached to the video (挂车, guà chē, “hanging the cart”). A livestream host can move more stock in two hours than a physical store moves in two months, because the friction between “I saw it” and “I bought it” is close to zero.
Who it’s for: brands with a visual product and margin to support content and paid boosting, especially F&B, cosmetics, fashion, and anything that livestreams well. Minimum realistic budget: a real quarter-long test, content plus boosting plus one modest livestream, starts around 80,000 to 150,000 RMB. A full always-on shelf-and-livestream setup costs several times that.
The site has 20 Douyin articles already, so here I’ll only point: the latest user and spending data, and how paid Douyin campaigns are structured for foreign brands.
Weibo (微博): keep it for the day something goes wrong
Weibo’s monthly active users sat around 562 million in early 2026, down slightly from 567 million a few months earlier. It is not growing, and for most foreign brands it is no longer an acquisition channel. What it still does better than anything else in China: it decides what becomes a national story in a single afternoon, for better or worse.
If a product recall, a celebrity endorsement, or an angry customer post is going to blow up publicly in China, it blows up on Weibo first. I’ve watched brands scramble because they closed their Weibo account to “focus budget elsewhere” and then had nowhere official to respond when a crisis hit. Dolce & Gabbana’s reputation crisis is the textbook case of what happens when a brand has no credible voice there when it matters most.
Who it’s for: any brand operating in China, regardless of category, purely as an insurance policy and a place to catch trending hashtags for free exposure. Minimum realistic budget: maintaining a verified, monitored account costs very little, a few thousand RMB a month for basic upkeep. The real spend is a crisis-response retainer with an agency on standby, worth budgeting 20,000 to 30,000 RMB a year even if you never need it.
Bilibili (B站): the platform for brands with a real story
Bilibili reported around 376 million monthly active users and 115 million daily active users in the first quarter of 2026, with average daily time spent hitting 119 minutes, a platform record. The company also posted its first full year of profitability, according to Xinhua’s Economic Information Daily. Around 80% of its audience is Gen Z.
This is not a platform for a 15-second product ad. Bilibili users watch long-form video: documentaries, deep-dive reviews, behind-the-scenes content. A brand with an actual origin story, a craft process, or a founder worth listening to can build real loyalty here. A brand that just wants reach should go to Douyin instead.
Who it’s for: brands targeting under-30 audiences with a genuine story to tell, gaming, tech, outdoor, or craft products especially. Minimum realistic budget: because content is long-form, production costs more than a Douyin clip. Budget 100,000 to 200,000 RMB per quarter for a real content series, not a one-off video.
What’s dead or not worth your first budget
- Kuaishou (快手): still huge in raw numbers, strong in lower-tier cities, but for most foreign brands entering China it’s a second-year platform, not a first one. Go there once you already have a working playbook to adapt.
- QQ: over a billion accounts still exist, almost no foreign brand marketing budget goes there anymore. Skewed young and gaming-heavy, not a sales channel.
- Douban (豆瓣): niche and cultural, film, books, indie music. Useful only if that’s literally your product category, otherwise skip it entirely.
- Zhihu (知乎): a question-and-answer platform good for B2B thought leadership, not for consumer social budgets. Worth a look if you sell to businesses, not shoppers.
A real case: Marta’s jewelry brand
Marta runs a small Spanish jewelry brand, handmade silver pieces, mid-range price point. Her first move into China was a Weibo feed ad campaign, on the advice that “everyone needs to be on the biggest platforms.” Three months and 40,000 RMB later, she had 12 orders. Barely enough to cover the sample shipments.
The problem wasn’t the product. It was the platform doing the wrong job. Weibo is built for noise, not for someone actively comparing “Spanish silver earrings” before a purchase. We moved most of that budget to Xiaohongshu, seeding 25 KOC notes over two months built around real styling use cases, and paired it with a WeChat Mini-Program store so buyers who found her through search had somewhere simple to check out and reorder from directly.
It worked because the platform now matched the buying behavior: discovery and trust-building on Xiaohongshu, a frictionless repeat-purchase point on WeChat. In the following quarter, orders went from 12 to 96, and 22% of those buyers placed a second order through the Mini-Program within eight weeks. No miracle multiplier, just the right job assigned to the right app.
Where to put your first budget
If you’re starting from zero and have one social budget to split, here’s the allocation I give clients most often:
- 40% WeChat: the account and Mini-Program are the infrastructure you own. Build it first, even if sales come from elsewhere.
- 25% Xiaohongshu: discovery and trust, especially if your category gets researched before it gets bought.
- 25% Douyin: your conversion test, content plus a small paid push, scale it up only once it converts.
- 10% Weibo: not media spend, insurance. Account upkeep and a crisis plan on paper before you need one.
Add Bilibili as a fifth line item only once the above is running and you have an actual story worth a long-form format, not before.
One more thing worth knowing: KOC and affiliate programs now cut across almost every platform above rather than living on just one. If you want the mechanics of how those commission-based partnerships are structured in China, this guide walks through it step by step.
FAQ
Do I need to be on all five platforms?
No. Most foreign brands start with two: usually WeChat for retention and one discovery channel, Xiaohongshu or Douyin, depending on whether your product gets researched or gets impulse-bought. Add the rest once the first two are actually working and generating cash to reinvest.
Which platform should I start with if I only have one budget?
If your product needs explaining or trust before purchase, Xiaohongshu first. If it’s visual and impulse-friendly, Douyin first. Either way, build a simple WeChat Mini-Program alongside it from day one, otherwise you have no place to send repeat buyers once the first platform starts working.
How long before I see real sales from social media in China?
Expect 8 to 12 weeks before you have enough signal to judge a platform honestly, longer for Xiaohongshu seeding, which builds trust gradually rather than converting on day one. Anyone promising sales within two weeks is selling you the promise, not the platform.
Do I need a Chinese business license to open these accounts?
It depends on the platform and the feature. Basic content accounts on Weibo or Bilibili can run without one. Full e-commerce checkout inside WeChat Mini-Programs or Douyin shops generally requires a local business entity or a licensed local partner to process payments and issue invoices legally.
Can I run these platforms from Europe or the US, or do I need a team in China?
You can manage strategy and approvals from anywhere. Day-to-day execution, replying to comments in real time, coordinating with a livestream host, reacting to a Weibo trend, works far better with someone on China time. Most of our clients run this as a hybrid: brand direction from HQ, execution through a local team or agency.
What if my brand isn’t ready for e-commerce yet, just brand awareness?
Then skip the commerce build-out and focus on Xiaohongshu seeding and a content-only WeChat Official Account. Both build discoverability and trust without needing a checkout system yet. Add the transactional layer once you have a China entity ready to fulfill orders.
How GMA can help: we run WeChat Official Accounts and Mini-Program builds, Xiaohongshu KOC seeding campaigns, and Douyin content and advertising for foreign brands entering China, matched to the platform that actually fits your product. If you want a second opinion on where your first China social budget should go, reach out to our team before you spend it.
Sources: China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), 57th Statistical Report, via 199IT; Xiaohongshu active user data via Qiangua; Douyin e-commerce GMV estimates for 2025-2026; Weibo Q1 2026 earnings; Bilibili Q1 2026 earnings via Xinhua Economic Information Daily. Xiaohongshu user figures vary by source; see Statista for the range of published estimates.
