Digital marketing in China: what applies to you?

Most guides we read on this topic list the same platforms and stop there. That won’t tell you what your company can open, or which rules come with it.

What applies to you turns on two things: your legal setup and what you sell. This guide sorts it that way, as part of our section on how to find Chinese customers.

Does your usual marketing stack reach China?

Mostly not. The main Western channels fail from the mainland, so your existing campaigns don’t transfer. These are GreatFire’s results for each http address, read on November 1, 2026. It tests https separately.

Your channel	GreatFire result	Failed tests, last 90 days	Closest local channel
Google Search	Blocked 5	10 of 10	Baidu, Bing, 360, Sogou
Facebook	Blocked 6	83 of 83	WeChat
Instagram	Blocked 7	3 of 3	Xiaohongshu
X	Blocked 8	1 of 1	Weibo
TikTok	Blocked 9	4 of 4	Douyin
LinkedIn	Not blocked 10	0 of 1	None we can name with confidence

The last column is our own mapping, not a test. Local platforms overlap and don’t match their Western cousins feature for feature.

Sample sizes run from 1 to 83 tests, so X and LinkedIn each rest on a single recent result. Read those two rows as weak signals.

LinkedIn is the trap. It connected in its one test, which proves little.¹⁰

It said in October 2021 that it would shut its localized China service. TechNode reported in May 2023 that the replacement, InCareer, would close its jobs portal that August.¹¹ Don’t build a China plan on it.

Reaching Chinese people abroad is a different job. See mainland China or the diaspora before you assume any of this applies.

Where do attention and ad money go?

Attention sits in apps, and the money is following it unevenly. Search remains large, though it’s shrinking. CNNIC’s December 2025 data puts messaging and short video above 95% of internet users, and search at 69.5%, or 782.06 million people, down from 877.82 million a year earlier.¹

CNNIC says smart search products affected the search count, without putting a number on that effect.¹ Our hub guide has the full usage table.

Advertising revenue tells a sharper story than the usage data, and none of the guides we read looked at it.

Signal	Figure	Period
Tencent marketing services revenue	RMB 43.6 billion, up 22% 2	Q2 2026
Baidu online marketing revenue	RMB 13.1 billion, down 19% 3	Q2 2026
Top 500 brands’ media investment, Ebiquity forecast	Flat 4	2026, forecast of November 2025
Same brands, big five agency groups’ average forecast	Up 5.15% 4	2026, forecast of November 2025

Tencent

• RMB 43.6 billion
• +22%

Baidu

• RMB 13.1 billion
• -19%

VS

The forecasts disagree openly. Individual agency numbers ran from 4.0% at WPP Media to 7.6% at OMG, and agencies have a stake in the answer.⁴

We couldn’t read a current figure for digital’s share of Chinese ad spend, because the data we found was paywalled.

Search hasn’t gone away. The Baidu app had 644 million monthly users in June 2026.³ Baidu held 49.00% and Bing 21.69% of the clicks StatCounter measured in October 2026.¹²

What can you run without a Chinese company?

Your website and organic search stay open. Paid channels and commerce come with conditions, and the evidence for them is uneven.

Our hub guide covers the channels in general. This table adds the catch for each one, including Douyin.

Channel	Without a Chinese entity	The catch	Evidence
Website, organic search	Yes	A site hosted abroad can appear on Baidu without an ICP 13	Medium, vendor source
Baidu Ads	Through a local partner 1415	2026 sources want mainland hosting, a 2019 source says no ICP is needed 141535	Vendors agree on the partner, disputed on hosting
WeChat Official Account	Disputed	AppInChina (2026) points to a Service Account only, a 2024 source wants a Chinese license or WFOE 1617	Weak
WeChat ads	Unconfirmed	WE Interactive says foreign accounts often face tighter spending limits and fewer formats, without a source 30	Weak
Xiaohongshu account	Reported yes	AppInChina describes direct registration of a professional account 18	Medium
Xiaohongshu ads (Juguang)	Reported no	AppInChina says only a Chinese entity can open an account, so brands use a partner 18	Weak
Douyin store	Reported yes	The cross-border route needs a mainland joint-liability entity 19	Weak
Douyin ads (Ocean Engine)	Depends on your industry	Non-Chinese licenses accepted, with limits by sector 20	Single vendor source
Cross-border marketplaces	Yes, for goods	You must appoint a Chinese-registered company for customs registration and truthful declaration 21	Official, but a 2018 text

We read no official page from WeChat, Xiaohongshu, Baidu’s ad service or Ocean Engine on these conditions. AppInChina and others in this table sell services in this market, so treat those rows as leads to verify.

Borrowing a local company’s account has its own price. ProfileTree warns that your followers end up under someone else’s control.³¹ Our guides to WeChat and Xiaohongshu cover account setup.

What changes with what you sell?

Your product can open or close a route before you pick a channel. Find your line, then read the guide beside it.

You sell	What applies	Read next
Professional or B2B services	The cross-border retail framework doesn’t fit, as it covers goods for personal use 21	B2B marketing
Consumer goods from abroad	Product list, RMB 5,000 per transaction, RMB 26,000 per year, set in 2018. We found no later revision, so confirm them 2122	Selling without being in China
Education, tourism, games	Ocean Engine reviews these case by case, per AppInChina 20. Education and training ads can’t guarantee results, under Article 24 23	How to advertise
Apps	AppInChina reports no Android download campaigns for foreign-published apps by overseas advertisers since February 12, 2026 20	How to advertise
Medical products, drugs, supplements	Prior review of ads under Article 46 23	A local adviser
Investment products, real estate	Specific ad rules in Articles 25 and 26 23	A local adviser

Audience also moves the picture. In Hurun’s 2026 survey of 470 wealthy Chinese, 61% named Xiaohongshu as an information source, 48% Douyin and 32% WeChat.³² That covers high-net-worth respondents only.

In B2B, a Kawo survey quoted by Crayfish found that all 50 international B2B multinationals polled had official WeChat accounts.²⁸ That’s a vendor citing a survey of large groups about 2023, not proof for a smaller firm.

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.

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Which rules follow your marketing?

On Chinese platforms, plan as if Chinese advertising law applies to you. On your own site hosted abroad, the answer is less clear. Both are questions for a local adviser.

The Advertising Law covers commercial advertising inside China, and Article 44 extends it to the internet.²³ It has no clause on foreign advertisers, so don’t read this as a settled position on your site.

Rule	What it says	Source
Superlatives	“Best”, “highest”, “national-level” and similar terms are banned, with fines of RMB 200,000 to 1 million for the advertiser	Articles 9(3), 57 23
False advertising	Orders to stop and to clear the effects, plus a fine of 3 to 5 times the ad cost, or RMB 200,000 to 1 million if that cost can’t be calculated or is clearly too low. Repeat or serious cases cost more	Articles 28, 55 23
Labeled ads	Ads must be identifiable, and paid search results must be marked 广告	Article 14 23, Article 9 24
Endorsers	They may only recommend what they’ve actually used	Article 38 23
Identity checks	Ad service providers verify advertisers and keep records for at least 3 years after the ad ends	Article 14 24
Live selling	The seller takes on an advertiser’s duties	Article 19 24

The endorser rule matters if you work with influencers, and the labeling rule covers paid posts. Our guide to banned advertising words shows how the superlative rule works in practice.

Privacy can reach you abroad. Under Article 3, China’s PIPL covers handling data outside China to offer products or services to people there, or to analyze their behavior. Article 53 requires foreign handlers in scope to set up a local body or name a representative.²⁵

ProfileTree counts lead forms, analytics, email lists and ad pixels in that scope.³¹ We found no official test for when a Chinese site counts as targeting people in China.

See does China’s privacy law apply to your website?

An ICP is a separate matter. It depends on hosting, so see do you need an ICP license?

Which market figures should you doubt?

Many of the headline numbers in China marketing guides have no visible source. We tried to trace the ones you’ll meet most.

Claim you’ll see	Where	What we found
Baidu has over 80% of search	Crayfish, 2024, no clear source 28	StatCounter shows 49.00% for October 2026 12
WeChat has 1.36 billion monthly users	WE Interactive, no source 29	Tencent reports 1,439 million at June 30, 2026, Weixin and WeChat combined, worldwide 2
Xiaohongshu has 350 million monthly users	WE Interactive, no source 29	QuestMobile: 245 million in March 2026, in a 36Kr piece that also says over 400 million without a source 26. TechCrunch: 300 million in January 2025 27. Our Xiaohongshu guide compares the figures
Douyin has over 800 million active users	AppInChina, no source 19	Crayfish gives 743 million, no clear source 28. We read no official figure
ByteDance holds about 26% of digital ads	WE Interactive, no source 29	We couldn’t trace it
Internet penetration is just over 50%	China Briefing, 2018, citing a 2018 report 34	CNNIC: 80.1% at the end of 2025 1

That last guide still appears in searches for this topic, and it dates from 2018.

What should you check before you spend?

Six checks will show what applies to you. None of them needs a budget, only a few conversations.

1. Name your audience. Mainland companies, mainland consumers and Chinese people abroad need different plans.
2. Test your site from China. Every channel sends people somewhere, so check that your site is accessible.
3. Confirm eligibility in writing. Ask the platform or its authorized agent about your country, your industry and your landing page.
4. Decide who holds the account. Find out whose name is on it, and what happens if you stop working together.
5. Review your claims and forms. Check Chinese copy against the rules above, and ask a local adviser about what your forms collect.
6. Plan your replies. A lead is wasted if nobody can respond, so read how to answer Chinese enquiries.

Then pick one channel. Baidu, WeChat or Xiaohongshu: which channel first? covers the order, search engine marketing in China covers paid search, and Baidu SEO or Baidu Ads covers which to start with.

The bottom line

Digital marketing in China isn’t one plan you adapt. It’s a set of channels with different doors, and your legal setup and product decide which ones open.

Check access first, doubt unsourced numbers, and test one channel before you commit to more.

How Index in China can help

We work on one part of this: organic visibility.

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, and we’ll tell you when your case needs a local adviser. See what we do or book a 30-minute call.

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