How do you find Chinese customers?

“Chinese customers” can mean a factory in Suzhou, a shopper in Chengdu or a family in Vancouver. The guides we read blend them, yet each one needs a different plan.

This guide sorts them, shows which channels you can open, and links every guide in this section. It’s part of how to be visible in China.

Which Chinese customers are you looking for?

There are four audiences, and each needs a different plan. Pick one before you spend anything.

Audience	Published size	Who it suits	Start with
Mainland companies	No usable public count	B2B products and services	B2B marketing in China
Mainland consumers	936.89M online shoppers, end 2025 2	Brands, online goods	How to sell without being in China
Chinese people abroad	About 51M to over 60M, estimates 34	Local services, property, education	Reaching Chinese people abroad
Visitors and students	167.92M outbound trips in 2025 7, 1,076,015 mobile students in 2023 6	Travel, retail, universities	Mainland or diaspora

The diaspora range is a disagreement. Taipei’s OCAC estimates 51.06 million at the end of 2025, descendants included, outside mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.³

People’s Daily says over 60 million, on what it calls incomplete statistics.⁴

Location matters more than the total. OCAC puts 68.5% of that population in Asia and 5.0%, or 2.58 million, in Europe.³

National counts often run lower. Pew counts about 5 million Chinese Americans, where OCAC estimates 6.21 million.³⁵

Hong Kong and Taiwan are separate cases. See Chinese for Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Where do Chinese buyers look?

No one has measured this well. CNNIC’s usage counts for December 2025 put messaging, short video and shopping ahead of search, and search is shrinking.²

Use	Users	Share of internet users
Messaging	1.094 billion	97.2%
Short video	1.074 billion	95.4%
Online shopping	936.89 million	83.2%
Search engines	782.06 million	69.5%
Generative AI	602 million	Not comparable: CNNIC gives 42.8% of population

Search lost about 96 million users in a year, from 877.82 million.² CNNIC says AI search products affected the count, without putting a number on that effect.²

Among engines, Baidu held 49.00% and Bing 21.69% of the clicks StatCounter measured in October 2026.¹ Our guide to Chinese search engines explains what that data does and doesn’t show.

Audience changes the picture. In Hurun’s 2026 poll of 470 wealthy Chinese, as reported by Dragon Trail, 61% named Xiaohongshu as an information source and 32% named WeChat.³⁵

That covers luxury and high-net-worth buyers only.

Read more in how Chinese buyers search for foreign services.

Which channels can a foreign company open?

Several, often through a partner, and the evidence is uneven. Official platform pages were often unavailable to us, so several rows rest on agencies and vendors that sell these services.

Channel	Chinese entity needed?	What we can say	Evidence
Your website and search	No	A site hosted abroad can appear on Baidu without an ICP, though Chinafy warns slow sites suffer 18	Medium, vendor source
Baidu Ads	Not if you use an agent	No self-service account without a mainland entity 1920	Agencies agree on the agent, not on hosting details
WeChat Official Account	Disputed	AppInChina (2026) says a Service Account is possible, a 2024 source requires a Chinese license or WFOE 2122	Weak
Xiaohongshu account	No, per AppInChina 23	Verification fee cited at RMB 600, yearly per AppInChina 2324	One vendor on the entity question
Xiaohongshu ads	Reported yes	AppInChina says only a Chinese entity can open a Juguang ad account, so foreign brands use a local partner 23	Weak
Cross-border marketplaces	No	Goods only, with a Chinese-registered agent for customs 25	Official, but 2018 texts
Agent or distributor	No, per a law firm	Harris Sliwoski says a distributor needs no Chinese entity or bank account, and agent setups no local entity 38. A 2018 EU SME Centre agenda also lists agents 27	Law firm, 2025
Trade fairs and missions	Check with each organizer	Foreign companies exhibit at the CIIE 9. We found no general rule	Official for the CIIE only

Three of those rows hide conditions worth knowing now.

• Baidu Ads: AppInChina wants a site hosted in the mainland, and Marketing to China a landing page hosted there.¹⁹²⁰ Requirements vary, so ask an authorized Baidu agent before you budget.
• WeChat: Eligibility by country is unconfirmed. We read no Tencent page on it, so see WeChat for foreign businesses.
• Cross-border sales: The 2018 framework is for personal-use goods on a product list.²⁵ Notice 49 caps them at RMB 5,000 per transaction and RMB 26,000 per year.²⁶ We found no later revision, which doesn’t prove there is none, so confirm the limits. This route doesn’t help a services firm.

We left Douyin out of the table because the rules we read come from one vendor. Digital marketing in China sets them out, with the catch for each channel.

Budgeting a channel? Read how to advertise in China and Baidu, WeChat or Xiaohongshu: which channel first?

How do you meet B2B buyers offline?

Start with people who already know you. The EU SME Centre lists these routes for finding Chinese partners, and the order here is ours.⁸

1. Your existing clients. Ask international clients if your product would interest their China subsidiary. The Centre says some European manufacturers entered China this way.
2. Your own trade bodies. Embassies, chambers of commerce and trade promotion agencies may make introductions.
3. Business missions. These are organized visits, often supported by those same bodies.
4. Trade fairs. The Centre calls them the most common option, mainly in China but also elsewhere.
5. Academic conferences. For technology companies, your R&D staff can answer calls for papers and meet Chinese researchers.

Check which way a fair faces. A fair built for export can put you among other sellers.

Fair	Direction	Fact
China International Import Expo	Foreign sellers into China	9th edition scheduled in Shanghai, November 5 to 10, 2026 910
Canton Fair	Leans to export 11	About 167,000 overseas buyers at the first phase of the 139th fair, 2026 12

One guide we read lists both as places to find partners, without saying which way they face.²⁸ If your goal is Chinese buyers, a fair full of foreign buyers may be the wrong room. The Canton Fair does have import sections, with almost 510 registered participants reported in 2023, so check that part before you rule it out.³⁷

Does cold outreach work?

We found no reliable data either way, and the written rules put consent first. That matters more than the open rate.

• Advertising Law, art. 43: No electronic ads without the recipient’s consent or request. You must show your real identity, contact details and a way to refuse.¹³
• Art. 62: The penalty for an advertiser is RMB 5,000 to 30,000.¹³
• E-mail Measures of 2006: Explicit consent, plus “广告” or “AD” at the start of the subject line.¹⁴

We found no text settling how these rules reach a sender with no presence in China, and we couldn’t confirm the 2006 Measures against an official list of rules in force. Ask a local adviser.

Purchased lists add a privacy question too. See does China’s privacy law apply to your website? Our guide to B2B marketing in China applies these rules to a real campaign.

Your usual networks won’t carry this for you either.

• Facebook: Its http address failed all 83 GreatFire tests in the last 90 days, up to October 13, 2026.¹⁵
• LinkedIn: Connected in its one recent test, on October 3, 2026, but that’s a single result.¹⁶ LinkedIn announced the end of its localized China service in October 2021.¹⁷

Free check

Is your website visible on Baidu?

Enter your website. We check Baidu, access from China and how your site is set up, then email you the report.

Your websiteCheck my site

Do you need a presence in China?

Not to start. Being found online takes no Chinese entity, but a representative office is no shortcut to selling.

A representative office can do market research, promotion and liaison, and it can’t earn money.²⁹ Profit-making activity can bring fines of RMB 50,000 to 500,000.²⁹

Choosing a structure is a legal question, and it depends on your sector. Confirm your case with a local adviser.

Our guides to selling without being in China, working without a Chinese company and entering the Chinese market set out the options.

What must be ready before your first lead?

Four things, and each one can lose a buyer who was ready to act.

• A site that loads and a form that sends. Test your site from China, then check your forms and reCAPTCHA.
• Pages written for Chinese readers. Start with translating and localizing a website for China.
• Someone to reply. Plan how to answer Chinese enquiries before the first one arrives.
• Proof that’s true. Under the Advertising Law, the advertiser answers for what its ads claim.¹³ Check banned advertising words too.

On trust, Marketing to China points to referrals, public reviews, case studies and a Chinese-speaking salesperson.³³ Daxue points to an offline presence and Mandarin content.³⁴ Those are agency opinions, not survey data. See how to earn the trust of Chinese buyers.

Payment needs early checking if you sell online.

• WeChat Pay: The direct mode is limited to Hong Kong and Britain, and the institution mode applies wherever the service exists.³⁰
• Via Airwallex: Only Hong Kong and Singapore businesses can accept payments from the Chinese and Hong Kong versions of the app.³¹
• Alipay via Antom: Eligibility depends on your country, model and a compliance review.³²

Your business type can matter more than your country, so start with accepting Alipay and WeChat Pay.

In what order should you work?

Go from the audience to the channel, never the other way round. This order is our reasoning, not a tested method, and it comes with no date or promised result.

1. Choose one audience. Use the table at the top of this guide.
2. Check your limits. Sector, product and structure come first. Start with the legal basics.
3. Fix access. See how to put your website in China.
4. Publish key pages in Chinese. See simplified or traditional Chinese for which script fits your audience.
5. Get indexed. See Baidu SEO: how it differs from Google.
6. Add one channel. Add a second only once you can run the first.
7. Read your own data. Your enquiries beat any market total.

1. 1Choose one audience
2. 2Check your limits
3. 3Fix access
4. 4Publish in Chinese
5. 5Get indexed
6. 6Add one channel
7. 7Read your own data

Chinese customer guides by theme

Every guide in this section answers one question. Pick the one closest to yours.

Know your buyer

• How Chinese buyers search for foreign services
• Mainland China or the diaspora: who to target
• How to reach Chinese people living abroad

Win and serve clients

• How to sell to Chinese clients without being in China
• How to earn the trust of Chinese buyers
• How to answer Chinese enquiries without speaking Chinese
• Accepting Alipay and WeChat Pay as a foreign business

Choose your platforms

• Baidu, WeChat or Xiaohongshu: which channel first?
• WeChat for foreign businesses
• Xiaohongshu for foreign businesses

Plan your marketing

• Digital marketing in China: what applies to you
• Search engine marketing in China
• B2B marketing in China
• How to advertise in China

Go further

• How to enter the Chinese market

The bottom line

If you remember one thing, make it this: choose the audience before the channel.

Then build what you control first, a working site in Chinese that search engines can find. Add platforms when you can run them and when your own enquiries justify it.

How Index in China can help

We cover the search part of this plan. We translate your site into Simplified Chinese with a human reviewer, work on getting it indexed on Chinese search engines and send a monthly report on Chinese traffic.

We don’t promise rankings or traffic. See what we do, or book a 30-minute call.

Book a 30-minute call

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