Everything brands need to know about Xianyu

While China’s biggest secondhand app, Xianyu, has undeniably altered consumers’ cultural perception of buying vintage, it is no longer just a destination for pre-loved shopping. Also known as Idle Fish, Xianyu (咸鱼) is Alibaba’s C2C marketplace with more than 600 million registered users, and it has evolved into a full-scale social-commerce ecosystem — now one of China’s fastest-moving gig markets and a treasured hub for communities built around niche interests. “Xianyu has around 66 million active users in ACG (anime, comics, and games), collectibles, toys, cards, and other fandom-driven categories,” says Murphy Chen, a freelance senior strategist. “These communities treat Xianyu as both a marketplace and a social space, often exchanging dozens of messages per transaction. For brands, this reveals how subcultures behave, spend, and evolve.” Dubbed the Chinese Depop, Xianyu provides valuable insights into Gen Z consumption, resale culture, and community structures. Here’s a guide to how the platform works, who uses it, and why it matters. What is Xianyu? Launched in 2014 out of Taobao’s secondhand section, Xianyu reframed “used goods” as “idle items,” a deliberate move to shed the stigma of secondhand consumption in China. And it worked. Today, Xianyu is not only the country’s largest C2C resale marketplace but also a Gen Z-dominated lifestyle community where young users can pick up side gigs, offer micro-services, and participate in the resale engine that assists China’s circular economy. “[The platform] normalizes flexible, fluid consumption,” Chen says. “Because everything can be traded, Gen Z becomes more open to trying new things and less attached to traditional ownership. The platform helps popularize ‘try first, resell later’ behavior.” In 2024, Xianyu became a priority business for Alibaba. It now spans offline recycling stores, authentication services, community forums, and an expanding service marketplace. The platform’s popularity has led companies like Superbuy, founded in 2012, to offer purchasing agent services that enable global customers to buy items from China’s e-commerce platforms. The users: Young and thrifty Xianyu’s core demographic overlaps with Douyin and Bilibili: around 43% of its users were born after 1995, with those users accounting for more than 60% of all service orders. These young users are flipping sneakers, hunting vintage handbags, trading gaming gear, discussing niche interests, and even using Xianyu to diversify their revenue streams, defying traditional work culture. What’s sold: From iPhones to K-pop merchandise The platform covers nearly every consumer category, but 3C electronics (including phones, tablets, and computers) dominate GMV due to high standardization. Daily household items are also popular, along with more niche cultural and creative products. Luxury resale is one of the app’s most active verticals, and authentication for high-value items like sneakers, electronics, and jewelry has become a major trust-building feature. The rise of Xianyu’s gig economy One of the platform’s most distinctive evolutions is its side-hustle marketplace, often chaotic but uniquely effective. According to research compiled by China Talk, in 2024 alone, 9.5 million users posted side jobs, daily side-hustle transactions exceeded $1.4 million (RMB 10 million), and average annual earnings from side jobs reached $516 (RMB 3,660). Gigs range from pet care and queuing services to academic consulting, gaming companions, and specialized errands. Some are particularly unique, such as hiring a stranger to recover a lost pet in a small city, illustrating how improvisational, trust-based, and hyperlocal the ecosystem has become. Ultimately, the app facilitates peer-to-peer hustle, built on chat-based negotiation, flexible pricing, and very few rules. How the platform works Anyone with Taobao or Alipay can list items. Posting is mobile-first and fast: “one-click resale” from Taobao purchase history remains a key feature. Xianyu thrives on interest-based groups and interactive channels, including: Fishponds (鱼塘): hobby communities and local groups Huiwan (会玩): fandom, gaming, fashion circles Seafood Market (海鲜市场): trending-topic marketplace Livestream “Night Markets”: late-night shopping culture Celebrity resale shops: personal-item drops that fuel aspirational fashion These social layers differentiate Xianyu from Western resale apps, which are more transactional and less community-driven. Just as WeChat combines multiple Western apps in one, Xianyu is like having Reddit, X, and Vinted all in one place. Trust, risk, and the gray zones Xianyu’s growth has always been tied to its low barriers to entry — anyone can list items, negotiate through chat, and complete transactions directly. This openness creates a culture of improvisation but also exposes structural weaknesses. Trust is built through Alipay escrow, seller ratings, chat-based negotiation, third-party authentication, and the app’s volunteer-run “mini court.” Yet these mechanisms coexist with sprawling gray zones, ranging from harmless loopholes. such as discounted memberships, resold corporate perks, or point arbitrage, to more questionable services, like sneaking buyers into concerts with fake staff badges or offering access to employee-only venues. The platform has tightened oversight by imposing service fees and mandatory returns on commercial sellers, enforcing stricter compliance for high-volume accounts, and carrying out waves of account bans. Still, experts note that Xianyu operates in what they call an “off-market” space where rules are vague and enforcement uneven. Young users value the speed, flexibility, and low cost of a lightly regulated environment, and crackdowns can only go so far without undermining the very culture that powers Xianyu’s growth. Understanding the brand opportunity Xianyu resonates strongly with China’s Gen Z because it mirrors their shifting consumption values. Driven by self-expression, community, and frugality, young users treat the platform as both a marketplace and a cultural playground. At the same time, economic pressures have turned Xianyu into a crucial income stream, enabling millions of young people to monetize idle time and skills through side gigs that challenge convention. For brands, this behavior offers valuable insights into what Gen Z values, which products gain resale heat, and how microtrends spread through tightly knit communities long before they surface on mainstream platforms.

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Everything brands need to know about Xianyu