A Seat at Xi’s Table: Is K-Beauty Poised for a China Comeback?

When Amorepacific Chairman Suh Kyung-bae was named among the South Korean conglomerate heads invited to dine with Chinese President Xi Jinping during his visit to South Korea, industry watchers immediately began asking whether this was the start of K-beauty’s long-awaited reset in China. The context is striking. Xi’s trip was his first to South Korea in over a decade. The dinner guest list put Amorepacific in the same frame as Samsung, Hyundai and SK Group, while Chinese attendees reportedly included leaders from CATL, Sinochem and JD.com. For an industry heavily affected by an informal “hallyu freeze” since 2017, these developments raise a more commercial question: If access improves, can K-beauty meaningfully regain ground in China? The timing is notable. Both countries have rolled out visa-free entry for each other’s visitors — Beijing for South Korean nationals; Seoul for Chinese group tours — prompting a surge of cross-border travel that is already reshaping duty-free and in-store beauty consumption. Meanwhile, China is gradually permitting K-pop events and cultural collaborations again, though without any formal announcement of a policy reversal. For K-beauty players, this creates an opening that did not exist even two years ago. Yet, today’s China market is more competitive, more sophisticated, and dominated by fast-growing domestic players. Whether K-beauty can convert this moment into a genuine comeback will depend on how it adapts — and whether brands can build relevance with a new generation of Chinese shoppers. South Korea visa-free travel delivers immediate commercial impact If diplomacy is thawing at the top, the most immediate commercial impact is flowing through tourism and duty-free retail. From September 29, South Korea began allowing visa-free entry for Chinese group tourists of three or more, organized by approved travel agencies, for up to 15 days — a temporary measure scheduled to run until June 30 next year. Jeju Island continues to allow longer visa-free stays. The policy coincided with China’s National Day Golden Week (October 1-8) and is expected to attract an additional one million Chinese visitors by June 2026, according to Korean government estimates. Retailers have responded quickly. Department stores, hotels and duty-free operators are stepping up campaigns to capture Chinese spending. Shilla Duty Free has rolled out promotions for cruise passengers, including steep discounts on popular cosmetics. Lotte Department Store is offering gifts to Chinese shoppers, while Amorepacific plans Sulwhasoo pop-ups at Incheon International Airport. This builds on an earlier shift on the Chinese side. Beijing granted temporary visa waivers to Korean visitors in November 2024, helping push Chinese arrivals to South Korea back toward pre-pandemic levels. Chinese visitors to South Korea reached around 392,000 in October, roughly 69% of their 2019 level for the same month, and 602,000 in July. South Korean outbound tourism to China has also accelerated, with agencies such as Hanatour and Modetour reporting rising shares of China products in their portfolios and double-digit growth in bookings. Against this backdrop, K-beauty has quickly reclaimed its role as a core shopping category. According to a Korea JoongAng Daily report on South Korea’s visa-free entry for Chinese tourists, duty-free retailers and department stores have recorded a rapid uptick in sales led by K-beauty, with Trip.com data pointing to a 357% year-on-year surge in Chinese group bookings. Beauty counters have added Mandarin-speaking staff and designed promotions around tour itineraries. For Lauren Lee, host of the Korean Beauty Show podcast and founder of K-beauty brand Jelly Ko, this pattern is very familiar. “Tourism has always played an important role in spreading K-beauty,” she says. When visitors experience Korean culture, shop in duty-free or at retailers like Olive Young, and see results firsthand, it creates strong brand associations. Lee stresses, though, that these spikes are usually sharpest when travel first rebounds. Whether the current wave turns into long-term momentum “depends on what follows — education, cross-border ecommerce channels, follow-up marketing and products that genuinely resonate with Chinese consumers,” she says. Hana Tolio, co-founder of Baekho Beauty and CEO of The Art of Jeong, a marketing agency, says that the tourism boost is powerful, but cyclical. “Duty-free purchases,” she adds, “help the top line more than long-term equity.” The spike becomes strategic only when offline discovery is converted into content on platforms such as Xiaohongshu (also known as RedNote) and into convenient replenishment on Tmall and JD once travellers return home. A very different China market and narrower room to manoeuvre for K-beauty If access improves, K-beauty will be returning to a transformed competitive landscape. The freeze years gave C-beauty room to accelerate. Chinese brands such as Proya, Winona and Florasis have built out their R&D pipelines, mastered Douyin and Xiaohongshu, and tied their innovation to narratives of national pride. Young consumers aged 18 to 25, who entered beauty during this period, now see domestic labels as their default. “In the past, simply being Korean helped brands attract attention as part of a sweeping ‘hallyu’ trend,” says Hwee Chung, China Beauty Insight Director, Worldpanel. “But Chinese consumers’ beauty literacy continues to rise, and China has largely closed the technology gap.” In her view, the era when a specific nationality could function as a shortcut to desirability is over. At the same time, Korean “aesthetic soft power” never really left Chinese social media. Glass skin, gradient lips and straight brows remained ubiquitous reference points on platforms. K-pop tracks continued to play in malls, brands like Amuse held on via Xiaohongshu, and creators kept teaching Korean-inspired looks. Tolio highlights the example of Jang Wonyoung, whose beauty codes spread in China through organic discovery and tutorial culture rather than heavy advertising. “A consumer might choose Proya or Winona for skincare,” she says, “but still buy Amuse to access the aesthetic she aspires to.” Korea also retains perceived expertise in specific categories. On Xiaohongshu, hashtags around “Korean beauty tips” for women draw tens of millions of views, and brands like d’Alba, Lilybyred, Hince and Abib are repeatedly recommended as must-buys when visiting Korea. Their strengths lie in distinctive design, clear benefit communication, and exposure within Olive Young’s curated ecosystem — a model of discovery retail that has become aspirational in its own right, to the point where top Chinese livestreamers now host Olive Young–themed sessions for audiences who cannot travel. What a realistic K-beauty comeback would require K-beauty cannot simply replay its 2010s China playbook. Competing head-on with C-beauty on functional dermocosmetics and price is unlikely to succeed. For Chung, the top priority is narrative and localization. “The comeback should start from developing narratives that genuinely resonate with local consumers,” she says. That means framing benefits around Chinese shoppers’ specific pain points and usage scenarios, and accepting that even the same SKU may need different positioning and selling tactics in China versus Korea. She points to brands like Numbuzin and VT Cosmetics, which have grown quickly by responding to local category preferences and building China-specific TikTok-style stories. She also argues that aligning fully with C-beauty pricing is not the main game. Chinese consumers are increasingly looking for what they perceive as “value for money” rather than simply the lowest price, while many domestic brands are themselves trading up. In color cosmetics and innovation-led formats, there is room for K-beauty to price at a premium if it delivers clear differentiation. Lee emphasizes culture and education. K-beauty’s historic advantage, she says, has always been its cultural resonance — the way skincare routines, drama styling and idol aesthetics are woven into an aspirational lifestyle. If relations continue to warm, she believes priorities should include rebuilding creator relationships, explaining the Korean skincare philosophy in ways that feel locally relevant, and partnering with trusted Chinese platforms and retailers so consumers feel confident. Transparency around ingredients and claims will be essential to sustain trust over the long term. Tolio argues that K-beauty should focus on segments where it still leads — such as devices, cushion foundations, hybrid textures and sensorial formats — rather than chasing C-beauty in efficacy-first skincare. She sees premium positioning, paired with tactical festival discounts rather than everyday price wars, as the more sustainable route. Offline touchpoints still matter: selective department-store counters, targeted pop-ups and experiences can reinforce online storytelling and offer tangible proof of claims. A pivotal moment for Hallyu, but no guaranteed rerun of the past Amorepacific knows better than most both the upside and risks of leaning into China. The group entered the market in the early 1990s, built out distribution across more than 230 cities and at one point derived around 62 percent of its overseas sales from China, growing at roughly 30% a year. Today, South Korean industry data show exports of Korean cosmetics to China have fallen and the U.S. has overtaken China as South Korea’s largest beauty export destination. That makes the current diplomatic and tourism momentum especially significant. For now, the signals are aligned: Xi at a South Korean summit discussing culture, Amorepacific seated at the main table, reciprocal visa waivers, Chinese tour groups returning to duty-free counters, Korean outbound travel to China rebounding and Chinese social media once again filled with posts about Korean medical aesthetics and “good and affordable” skincare recommendations. But the market K-beauty is re-entering is more competitive, more nationalistic and more educated than the one it left. Whether this new chapter becomes a sustained China comeback will depend less on symbolism in Gyeongju banquet halls and more on how deftly Korean brands navigate Xiaohongshu feeds, Douyin algorithms, cross-border logistics and a consumer base that now expects both science and story. The thaw is real. The rest of the story is still up for K-beauty to write.

A seat at Xi’s table: Is K-beauty poised for a China comeback?

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A seat at Xi’s table: Is K-beauty poised for a China comeback?