Chinese Social Media is Not as Scary as it Seems

As the Internet climate in China becomes even harsher, the rest of the world and even the Chinese wonder, what will its social media look like in the next few years?

As the founder of two online businesses in China. I have been “on the ground” dealing with the regulatory changes on a daily basis. Here are some insights I have gained through my experience.

“The most important thing to know about doing business in China is that your passion and desire to provide a solution must outweigh the potential scale and dollar signs which usually entices entrepreneurs into China”.

In China although platforms are blocked, the content can still be found on Chinese platforms and is only censored if deemed sensitive.

A common misconception is that if something is published on Facebook, like a cute puppy video, it is not allowed in China. This is not true. That cute puppy video is probably circling the Chinese platforms just as fast as your Facebook feed.

In fact, there are 2 different Weibo handles named “You Tube”. These handles publish interesting and viral You Tube videos everyday. As you can see, the one pictured below has 9 million followers.

Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube — all of these platforms are blocked by the Chinese firewall, but that doesn’t mean that the content on those platforms isn’t in China. In fact a lot of the content going viral on Facebook and Youtube is also viral in China.

What exists in lieu of Facebook and Twitter are major platforms that you might be familiar with — WeChat and Weibo along with hundreds of other micro-platforms specializing in short videos, a la Vine, or live streaming.

The impetus behind blocking platforms like Facebook is largely protectionist. The government wants to protect the Chinese tech industry as well as the access of its citizens to data (or at least maintain control of having preferred access to it).

The Platforms protect you as a publisher.

An interesting characteristic of Chinese social media is that the platforms are competing for market share. In the West, we use multiple platforms on a daily basis to satisfy different needs — each one is specialized and differentiated to fulfill a specific purpose.

In China the two main platforms Weibo and WeChat are competing for users. Although they have different strengths, they want to be the platform that does it all, including functionality such as search. Content is a big part of the platforms’ offerings. Therefore, good content creators are also important to the platform and provide them competitive advantages.

The platforms are held to strict government regulations and adapt the content on platform itself and its relationship with the publishers accordingly. There is a delay on content publishing. Each video, for example, is screened for sensitive material. If any censors are flagged, your content will not be published.

As an example, during the presidential election we made a video about Trump called “Is Trump really the worst looking president in US’s history?”. In the video we went through other less quaffed United States leaders. It was hardly political, but WeChat censored the video. While this might have been annoying, we were all very thankful for the precaution and agreed it was better than our account being shut down.

Building on point number 2 — these platforms actually incentivize you to have a loyalty to them. They also actively stop you form advertising your content from another platform. For example, you can’t mention “WeChat” on Weibo. The post will not go through. If you have a Weibo logo on any of your WeChat content it will also not be published.

Although it might seem tough, but there is upside to content production in China

With the increased regulation and hoops you have to jump through to be a content publisher in China, one advantage that it affords you is higher barriers to entry. While on Western social media anyone and everyone can be a content producer, in China this is not necessarily the case.

If you have survived the obstacle course and jumped through the hoops, then you already have a competitive advantage.

Lastly, if you jump through the hoops, you have a chance to capture the most important demographics in the world and to operate in this market of the future! We have found that as long as you are passionately connected to the content and material you are creating, the hoops are worth jumping through.