China’s five-platform power map for brands in 2026

China’s digital economy in 2025 is no longer a neat split between “social” apps that generate desire and “commerce” apps that fulfill it. The biggest platforms are stitching the two together — sometimes by building their own checkout rails, sometimes by partnering with rivals. For brands, that means the old playbook (“seed on Xiaohongshu, harvest on Tmall”) is being rewritten in real time. The new reality is a multi-platform funnel where identity, trust, entertainment and transactions are distributed across five power centers: Xiaohongshu (also known as RedNote), Douyin, Kuaishou, Xianyu and Tmall. Xiaohongshu: Taste engine learns to close the loop Xiaohongshu remains China’s most influential lifestyle recommendation platform, anchored by a community that treats the app like a daily decision-making tool, from skincare to travel to wardrobe aesthetics. It has long marketed itself as a place where trends are born through user-generated content. Multiple industry and media reports put its monthly active users around the 300 million mark. What changed in 2025 is not the content DNA, but the platform’s strategic intent. On July 8, 2025, Xiaohongshu refreshed its positioning, replacing “Your Life Guide” with “Your Community of Life Interests” — a subtle but telling shift from search-and-recommendation toward interest-based belonging. The commerce implications are bigger than the tagline. Xiaohongshu has been historically strong at “planting grass” (种草) — creating desire — while weaker at capturing the final transaction. This year it moved to fix that by linking directly into China’s biggest e-commerce pipes. In May, Xiaohongshu announced deeper integration with Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall under the “Red Cat Plan,” enabling product links beneath posts and joint measurement that tracks users from content exposure to purchase. It has also been working on a JD.com pathway, similarly designed to let users complete purchases without the psychological “app-switch” that kills conversion. For luxury, the strategic value is that Xiaohongshu offers a “quiet selling” environment — storytelling-first livestreams and detailed product analysis — rather than the hard-sell spectacle that defined early livestream commerce. The platform is also unusually good at operationalizing human trust through KOCs and KOS (brand sales associates who build followings by answering questions, offering styling advice, and facilitating offline purchases). That layer matters in a cooling market where consumers are more rational and harder to move, and brands need proof, not just reach. Douyin: Conversion machine becomes brand-safe on China’s terms If Xiaohongshu is China’s taste engine, Douyin is the conversion engine. ByteDance’s short-video giant has scaled into one of the country’s largest media platforms, with research sources citing over 750 million monthly active users in 2023 — making it not just an entertainment product but a primary channel for information discovery in many lower-tier markets. Its commerce proposition is simple: attention to checkout without leaving the feed. Douyin’s algorithmic distribution, native storefronts and livestream infrastructure can turn a product moment into revenue in hours. But the platform’s maturation has also forced brands — especially luxury — to localize creatively rather than copy TikTok playbooks. China’s regulatory environment and cultural norms tend to reward “positive social values” and penalize controversy; in practice, this pushes brand content toward polished aspiration, celebrity storytelling, and holiday-specific narratives. The most important shift in 2025 was that Douyin is no longer just a “discount bazaar.” It is trying to own more of the premium funnel: education-rich livestreams, more sophisticated brand stores, and better tooling to connect content to product pages. The tradeoff is that brands have to treat Douyin like a full media-buying ecosystem — with creative iteration, KOL strategy and customer service — rather than a social channel that can be managed with occasional posts. Kuaishou: Reaching China’s lower-tier cities Kuaishou’s relevance is often misunderstood because its brand perception is less metropolitan than Douyin’s. Yet its scale is material, and its differentiation is strategic: deep creator-audience relationships and strong penetration in lower-tier cities. In the third quarter of 2024, Kuaishou said average monthly active users for its search product exceeded 500 million, with daily searches rising more than 20% year-on-year to over 700 million and peaking above 800 million — evidence of a platform that is increasingly behaving like a utility, not just an entertainment feed. On the monetization side, Kuaishou’s livestreaming revenue in that quarter fell 3.9% year-on-year to 9.3 billion RMB ($1.1 billion) — one reason it has been pushing “livestreaming+” models that extend beyond retail into hiring, local services and other categories. For brands, Kuaishou is not the place to “look expensive.” It is the place to look credible. The platform’s culture prizes relatability over gloss, which can be a feature, not a bug, for categories like FMCG, personal care, mass beauty and functional products — especially if growth is coming from non-tier-one consumers who want proof and practicality. Xianyu: Resale, side hustles and a real-time signal on youth values Xianyu, Alibaba’s C2C marketplace known as Idle Fish, has evolved from a secondhand app into a social-commerce ecosystem built around trading, messaging, niche communities and micro-services. In a China where younger consumers are balancing self-expression with financial pressures, Xianyu has become a behavioral barometer: what’s “hot,” what retains value, and what can be monetized. Recent reporting describes Xianyu as a Gen Z-dominated community marketplace, with the platform’s gig economy becoming a meaningful layer of its identity. In 2024 alone, 9.5 million users posted side jobs through the app, with daily side-hustle transactions exceeding 10 million RMB ($1.2 billion). For brands, Xianyu’s significance isn’t just resale. It is resale data and subculture visibility. If a sneaker, fragrance, handbag or collectible is trading at a premium — or being flipped at scale — Xianyu often shows that signal early. The platform also illustrates a structural truth about 2025 China: liquidity matters. Consumers increasingly prefer “try first, resell later” behavior, and Xianyu operationalizes that mindset. Tmall: The infrastructure layer that still determines who wins If the social platforms are competing to own discovery, Tmall remains the infrastructure layer that anchors trust, payments, logistics, customer service, and brand governance at scale. It is still where many consumers complete “serious” purchases, especially in categories that require assurance, returns, and membership programs. Tmall’s Luxury Pavilion is a useful window into how the ecosystem is evolving. Jing Daily reported that it hosts more than 200 premium and luxury brands and that high-frequency Very Important Customers (VICs) contributed to over half of platform sales in 2022, with stronger activity continuing into 2023. The strategic role here is not just selling; it’s lifecycle management — membership, CRM, and cross-channel activation that connects online behavior to offline VIP services. In 2025, Tmall’s advantage is that it can play Switzerland. As Xiaohongshu opens links into Taobao/Tmall, and as short-video platforms push deeper into commerce, Tmall’s conversion infrastructure becomes even more valuable — as the endpoint brands want consumers to land on, and as the measurement backbone for proving ROI. The playbook: Stop picking one platform, start designing a system The mistake brands still make in China is treating platform choice as identity— “We’re a Xiaohongshu brand” or “We’re a Douyin brand.” In 2025, winning looks more like systems design. Xiaohongshu to shape taste, validate products through community proof, and increasingly route traffic through partner links. Douyin to compress the funnel, scale hero SKUs, and turn narrative into immediate GMV. Kuaishou to build trust and penetration outside the coastal premium bubble, especially for practical categories. Xianyu to monitor resale heat, protect brand integrity in secondary markets, and understand what Gen Z values when money is tight. Tmall to own membership, governance, service, and the “serious purchase” mindset — especially for high-consideration categories.

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China’s five-platform power map for brands in 2026