Sports and exercise have always played a prominent role in Chinese life. What are the newest sports marketing in China? Although it has traditionally taken a backseat to academics for many younger people, the mentality of staying active and exercising into old age stands in stark contrast to the approach in many Western countries. There, […]

China’s overtime policy, dubbed “996”, was officially ruled illegal in August 2021 by Chinese authorities. China’s top court has ruled that the controversial overtime work policy is illegal, taking aim at the excessive working hours commonly practised at Chinese tech companies. The ban was met with cheers and overwhelming positivity by Chinese netizens, having witnessed […]

The fan economy has been on the rise in China ever since the explosive growth of the China idol industry back in 2018. The market size of China’s fan economy reached over 3.5 trillion RMB back in 2019 and is expected to surpass 6 trillion RMB by 2023. This is no surprising matter as Gen […]

Chinese consumers are global heavyweights in the luxury spending arena, with their share of purchases doubling last year. According to Bain, they will become the biggest spenders on luxury by 2025. However, the comparatively high costs of luxury goods in China has been a long-standing problem for domestic buyers. How China’s domestic luxury shopping environment […]

November 11th is Double 11, also known as 11.11 or Single’s Day. It’s the single biggest shopping event in the world and is four times bigger than Black Friday and Cyber Monday. In 2020, Alibaba, with its Tmall and Taobao e-commerce platforms, raked in US$75 billion in sales and fellow e-commerce giant JD.com took in […]

One of the most popular buzzwords in China these days is “neijuan” (内卷). Often translated as “involution”, it matches Western ideas of the rat race, burnout and diminishing returns, when putting more into something only results in getting less back. In China, it’s being used to describe situations where there’s unnecessary and excessive competition in […]

Given that the B in BATX, the traditional shorthand for China’s Big Tech companies, stands for Baidu, it’s understandable that many in the West prioritize the biggest search engine in China when they want to promote their brand, products or services there.  Baidu plays an important role in the consumer journey, but it’s not the […]

China has quite a collection of holidays that celebrate love. There’s Western Valentine’s Day on February 14th, White Day on March 14th, Cyber Valentine’s Day on May 20th and the Qixi [pronounced “chee shee”] Festival on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, usually in August. Sometimes it’s called the Double Seven Festival or […]

It was 2007 when Japan’s Hatsune Miku, one of the world’s first-generation virtual idols, made its debut attracting millions of cheerful fans worldwide and endorsing hundreds of brands over the years. Since then, the popularity of virtual idols has exploded, to the extent that many mainstream American entertainment industry’s think tanks predict that by 2025, […]

China is the largest market for meat due to its huge population. It has more chickens than any other nation and it’s the second largest consumer of beef behind the United States according to the US Department of Agriculture. Why does China have such a significant meat market? The country consumes more pork than anywhere […]

It’s safe to say at this point that Covid-19 has changed travel forever. Even after countries get their infection rates low enough and their vaccination rates high enough, travel will be different as we go forward. Businesses that want to target Chinese tourists need to keep these new travel trends in mind, while also keeping […]

Once a trend moves beyond a smaller base and include more players – consumers, e-commerce giants, government regulators, infrastructure construction – we start to see it as an economy in its own right.  And China is not a single market. It’s made up of many groups and niches that are important to understand. In 2021, […]