How do you reach Chinese people living abroad?

Most advice on this topic comes from agencies selling one channel. The surveys behind that advice are fewer and older than the confidence suggests.

This guide is for you if your future customers already live outside China, perhaps in your own city.

It’s part of our guide to finding Chinese customers. If you haven’t chosen yet, read mainland China or the diaspora first.

How many Chinese people live abroad, and where?

More than 50 million, and perhaps more than 60 million, according to published estimates. Most live in Asia.

Taipei’s OCAC estimates 51.06 million at the end of 2025.¹ A Xiamen University professor, writing in the People’s Daily Overseas Edition, says more than 60 million, based on incomplete statistics.²

Larger numbers need care. WARC cited close to 70 million in 2019,¹¹ and an agency text cites more than 100 million with no source.¹⁰ Neither helps you plan.

OCAC puts 34.95 million people in Asia, 10.50 million in the Americas and 2.58 million in Europe.¹ Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia lead its country list.¹

Those figures include descendants.¹ We read no language data for Southeast Asia, so don’t assume Chinese heritage there means reading Chinese.

Global totals won’t help you much anyway. What counts is your own country, and the numbers shift with what each source measures.

Country	National statistic	What it measures	OCAC estimate 1
United States	About 5 million, or 5.5 million from the Census Bureau 3	Chinese alone or in combination, 2021 to 2023 for Pew, 2023 for the Census Bureau	6.21 million
Canada	987,000 and 725,000 7	Mandarin and Cantonese speakers, 2021, with overlap	1.95 million
Australia	About 1.4 million 5	Chinese ancestry, 2021	1.47 million
England and Wales	445,646 4	Chinese ethnic group, 2021	500,000 for the UK
France	116,000 6	Immigrants born in China, 2023, without descendants	750,000

Then go local. In the US, California has about 1.8 million, and the New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco metro areas lead.³

Check what your national statistics office publishes by city. The table shows that countries collect different things, so you may get language, ancestry or only country of birth.

Who are you actually trying to reach?

There are several overlapping audiences here, and they need different treatment.

Some agencies split people by time in the country. Eastward Media uses newcomers, establishers and the assimilated, with overlapping definitions.¹²

That split is useful, but it misses origin, language and purpose of stay. A clearer working version looks like this.

Audience	What the data says	A sensible first move
Students	1,076,015 mobile higher education students in 2023, UNESCO 8	Chinese content, fast answers, short stays
Immigrants	46% of Chinese immigrants in the US, ages 5 and older, are English proficient 3	Chinese pages and Chinese-speaking contact
US-born	92% of US-born Chinese, ages 5 and older, are English proficient 3	Your normal English marketing
Cantonese speakers in Canada	Average age 50, against 39 for Mandarin speakers 7	Cantonese-speaking contact

Time in the country isn’t the whole story. Pew says 72% of Chinese immigrants in the US have lived there for more than 10 years,³ so limited English can’t be only a newcomer issue.

Student figures vary with the definition. Separately, the head of a Chinese study abroad service center reported 570,900 students abroad in 2025,⁹ so don’t treat the two numbers as the same count.

Origin needs the same caution. Australia’s 549,618 people born in China exclude Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan,⁵ and those groups aren’t interchangeable.

Pride in China isn’t a safe hook either. In a 2022-23 survey, Pew found 41% of Chinese Americans held a favorable view of China, and 53% most often call themselves Chinese or Chinese American.¹³

Our guide to earning the trust of Chinese buyers covers the proof these readers look for.

Which language should you use?

Let local data decide. The answer may well be English and Chinese, not one or the other.

Australia is a useful test. Lowy offered its 2022 poll in three versions, and 56.5% chose Simplified Chinese, 34.9% English and 8.6% Traditional Chinese.¹⁴

That’s 1,200 people from online panels, not a census or a random sample, but it’s the clearest signal we found.

Three checks settle most cases:

• Written language. Compare Simplified and Traditional for your audience, using our guide to choosing a script.
• Spoken language. Canada’s Mandarin and Cantonese numbers show that one spoken language rarely covers everyone.⁷
• English level. In Australia, 25.9% of Mandarin speakers and 23.7% of Cantonese speakers had low English proficiency in 2021.⁵ Many others read English well.

For readers from Hong Kong and Taiwan, see Chinese for Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Where do they search and spend time?

We found no good measure. No survey we read shows which search engine Chinese people abroad use. The rest is partial evidence, some of it pulling in opposite directions.

Start with what’s certain: Google works where they live, unlike in mainland China. Using it is a habit question, not an access question.

The agency case is that habits travel. Eastward says newcomers use China-based sites and apps up to 85% of the time while in the US.¹²

It gives no method, and it sells Chinese media inventory, which it says generally can’t be bought through North American ad exchanges except through itself.¹²

Independent data looks different. Lowy’s polling in Australia is the best source we found, and it covers one country.

Platform, Chinese-Australians	Use at least daily 15
YouTube	58%
Facebook	49%
WeChat	47%
Instagram	38%
TikTok or Douyin	26%
Weibo	16%
Other, mainly Xiaohongshu	7%

1. YouTube58%
2. Facebook49%
3. WeChat47%
4. Instagram38%
5. TikTok or Douyin26%
6. Weibo16%
7. Other, mainly Xiaohongshu7%

We summed Lowy’s “several times a day” and “about once a day” answers. Its page doesn’t say which wave this chart comes from.¹⁵ The 2022 wave surveyed 1,200 adults in late 2022, through online panels rather than a random sample.¹⁴

WeChat isn’t minor, though. It leads the “several times a day” answers at 36%, and its 2-point gap with Facebook is smaller than the 3.0% margin Lowy reports for 2022. Still, 15% never use it.¹⁴¹⁵

Both can be true, since Eastward describes US newcomers and Lowy all Chinese-Australian adults. That’s why the first question is who you’re after.

The famous WeChat number needs the same care. In Sun’s 2018 survey of 522 Mandarin speakers in Australia, 60% named WeChat as their main source of news and information.¹⁶

But it was a convenience sample, recruited largely through social platforms such as WeChat.¹⁶

By 2022, among Chinese-Australians who had used WeChat, 25% said they often used it for Chinese-language news, down from 36% in 2021.¹⁵

Baidu has the weakest case. The only data we found is a 2012 study of 58,000 Baidu visits across 10 sites, with 3.55% from outside greater China.¹⁷

Its author warned about the sample, and it’s 14 years old. It proves nothing today.

Channel	Case for it	Limit	Cost to test
Google, in Chinese	Open everywhere, and search shows intent	Volume in your area is unknown	Low
YouTube	Strong in Lowy’s Australian data 15	One country, and video takes effort	Medium
Xiaohongshu	Used for local information 21	Limited business tools	Low to medium
WeChat	Daily for many, close to contacts 15	Ads and account access are unclear	Medium
Local Chinese media	Reaches Chinese-only readers 33	Shrinking sector	Varies
Baidu	Habit, at best	No current evidence 17	Hold off for this goal

Google Ads has a change that matters here. Its help page says the campaign language setting for Search is being removed, starting in September 2026.

Ads will match based on the language of your ads, with priority for ads in the language of the search term.¹⁸

So write a Chinese ad for Chinese searches. Google doesn’t translate ads for you.¹⁹ Both Simplified and Traditional Chinese are supported.²⁰

Ads can still appear on searches in other languages.¹⁹ Set location targeting for your area, so the test at least stays in your market.

Is Xiaohongshu worth it for a local business?

It’s worth checking first, because it costs nothing to look.

Bellingcat says many Chinese nationals abroad use it as a search engine for local information, including places to eat, housing and paperwork.²¹

Mission Local showed the same habit in San Francisco, with recommendations that differ from Yelp and Tripadvisor.²²

That means customers may already be discussing your category there.

The audience is real but hard to size. An anonymous staff member gave Rest of World a figure of about 7 million overseas users in December 2024, mostly of Chinese descent.²³

A Dealmoon executive says most Chinese expats he speaks to are on the app, especially students in the UK.²⁴ Dealmoon works as RedNote’s overseas agency partner, so read that as a sales view.

Keep these limits in mind:

• Reach may go to China. One founder told Rest of World her livestreams mainly reached mainland users, with no paid way to adjust that.²³ That’s one case, from 2025.
• Selling is restricted. Livestreaming and stores required a Chinese ID in March 2025.²³
• Accounts have conditions. AppInChina describes a professional account route for foreign companies.²⁵ See our guide to Xiaohongshu for foreign businesses.

Free check

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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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Can you advertise on WeChat to people outside China?

Don’t assume so. Sources disagree, and we couldn’t open a Tencent page that settles it. Older articles that describe easy country targeting may be out of date.

Source	Date	What it says
WalkTheChat 26	Published 2017, with a later note on 2021	Overseas ads for residents and tourists paused in 2021
iClick 27	September 2024	Resident audiences in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia, plus business travelers in Italy and Australia
AppInChina 28	October 2026	Overseas entities can apply, but healthcare, real estate, legal and most education and financial services are restricted or excluded. It doesn’t address reaching users outside China

If you’re in one of the sectors AppInChina lists, treat WeChat ads as unavailable until someone proves otherwise.

Organic WeChat has its own question. Some guides say a foreign company can open a Service Account,³¹ and others ask for a Chinese license or WFOE.³²

Treat this as unresolved, and see WeChat for foreign businesses.

Do local Chinese-language media still matter?

Probably, for a narrower audience, though we read only one recent local report.

In San Francisco, Mission Local describes Sing Tao as one of the few ways elected officials can reach monolingual Chinese-speaking voters, and its editor’s radio programs as a go-to source for Chinese speakers.³³

The sector is shrinking, though. The same report cites falling advertising revenue and a smaller subscription base, and says many other Chinese-language outlets have disappeared.³³

Ask for current audience figures before buying. WARC listed iFun Video, Dealmoon, eCentime and Red Scarf as overseas platforms in 2019,¹¹ but check that any of them still fits your market.

A low-cost way to start

Run a small test before you commit to any channel. It will tell you more than any figure above, because none of them describe your city and your service.

1. Count your audience. Pull whatever language, ancestry or birthplace data your national statistics office publishes for your city.
2. Search like a customer. Type your service and your city in Chinese on Google and Xiaohongshu. Note who shows up, and whether anyone serves this need well.
3. Ask your current customers. If you have Chinese customers, ask how they found you and what they’d want in Chinese.
4. Publish one Chinese page. Start with your best service, using which pages to translate first. Include your address, hours, and a contact route.
5. Prepare your answers. Decide who replies before a message arrives. See answering Chinese enquiries.
6. Run a small Google test. Write a Chinese ad, set a location and a budget you can afford to lose, then count real enquiries.

1. 1Count your audience
2. 2Search like a customer
3. 3Ask current customers
4. 4Publish one Chinese page
5. 5Prepare your answers
6. Run a small Google test

None of these steps needs an ICP license or a Chinese company, as long as your site stays hosted where it is.

The bottom line

Reaching Chinese people abroad is a local marketing job in a second language, not a smaller version of entering China.

Start with your local data, your customers and one good Chinese page.

Then let real enquiries show you whether Xiaohongshu, WeChat or local media deserve a budget, because the published evidence can’t tell you.

How Index in China can help

We translate websites into Simplified Chinese with a human reviewer. That’s the page your local test needs, and you can reuse it if you later look at mainland China.

Our indexing work targets Chinese search engines, which matters less for an audience abroad, and we’ll say so if that’s your case.

See what we do or book a 30-minute call.

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