Hongguo was the most downloaded app in China in May. Questmobile data showed that in June 2025, Hongguo’s user base grew 179% year-on-year (YoY) and ranked number 3 in its app category. It already had 212 million monthly active users, surpassing the long-form video platform Youku and trailing behind BiliBili by only 13 million. This also marks the first time a microdrama app has overtaken a long-form video platform.

Created in 2023, at the height of in-app purchase (IAP) microdrama or microdrama 1.0, Hongguo was launched as a completely free app in response to subscription fees driving users toward piracy. Viewing is free on the platform, and viewers unlock the next episode by watching ads. Some pundits even argue that Hongguo marks the turning point for microdrama 2.0: free viewing + ads.

This is because Hongguo is not only free for viewers and pays creators ad revenue, but it also benefits from Douyin’s algorithm. It has a recommendation programme that has helped many series surpass 1 billion views. Hongguo is now ByteDance’s biggest hit after Douyin and TikTok, and the company is working to monetise it further and expand overseas. Not only is Hongguo introducing an ad-free membership, but it is also considering more content formats, such as Douyin-like non-fiction short-form videos. With TikTok still in limbo in the US, figuring out how to bring Hongguo and microdrama abroad might be the next objective from ByteDance.

Need to boost your China strategy? Dao Pro delivers bespoke insights on marketing, innovation, and digital trends, direct from Chinese sources. Find out more from our Dao Strategy Team here.

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Stephen Chow is a Hong Kong filmmaker, former actor and comedian, best known for the blockbusters ‘Shaolin Soccer’ and ‘Kung Fu Hustle’. It is worth noting that ‘Take Me Home’ is not a vertical screen drama but a horizontal screen format, which is closer to traditional films and TV dramas. Therefore many netizens appreciate that the microdrama has a ‘cinematic quality’. There are no advertisements for this microdrama yet, so it’s more of an attempt to promote the microdrama format.

The first season of ‘Take Me Home’ consists of 24 episodes, each lasting about five minutes. The series’ background is centred around an online fraud case. Stephen Chow is the producer of the series, guiding the creation of the show in terms of characters, plot setting and post-production editing. In the first episode, the plot cleverly incorporates real-life elements such as the nuclear sewage discharge in Japan and the shooting incident in the US, which resonated with the Chinese audience.

In January this year, Douyin announced that it had entered into an exclusive partnership with Stephen Chow, and that the two sides would jointly develop the boutique theatre IP ‘9527 Theatre’, which was originally scheduled to go live on Douyin in May but was not launched until June. This is related to the National Radio and Television Administration issuing ‘Latest working tips on microdrama filing’ – from 1 June onwards, if the microdrama is not filed then it would not be disseminated on the Internet. At present, the upper left corner of ‘Take Me Home’ carries a microdrama filing number and the issuing authority is the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Radio and Television.

In this year’s 618 shopping festival, more brands regard microdramas as a type of advanced advertisement based on the short video ecology, which can carry a variety of marketing plays. ‘Crazy Little Brother Yang’ launched the ‘Three Sheep Microdrama’, and Simba’s Xinxuan livestreaming brand collaborated with Oushiman to launch ‘She Looks Like a Bright Pearl’ (她似珍珠璀璨). Taobao also released the L’Oréal title of the ‘League of Milk Dads’ (奶爸联盟) and other branded microdramas. Microdramas tagged with 618 promotional products links, have become the latest marketing strategy for the festival.  

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The new subsidiary under Xinxuan will support businesses with the end-to-end process of producing and managing short video content, a key sales channel in China’s dynamic e-commerce space. According to local media outlet Blue Whale TMT, the service will include the planning, filming and editing of short videos, as well as online shop operation.

In addition, the newly established company will handle official clip authorisations on behalf of Xinba. Livestream hosts can sell smaller channels the right to use clips from their live broadcasts as marketing material and this can be a quite lucrative side business. With the help of the new subsidiary, Xinba and his team are eyeing a total annual GMV of 100 billion RMB (13.8 billion USD) this year with clip authorisation likely to offer a big boost.

Another top Chinese livestreamer Crazy Brother Yang has already been deploying this as an additional income stream, signing over clip authorisation to as many as 11,000 channels in 2022 alone.

This practice has proved controversial in the case of Dong Yuhui, the golden boy of private tutoring company turned livestreaming channel Oriental Selection. Fans of the beloved host were disgruntled to find a swath of accounts using clips of him to sell goods, with many believing it to be a scam. The use of these clips was in fact authorised, but Oriental Selection’s founder Yu Minhong apologised anyway for the misunderstanding.

Xin was permanently banned from posting content on TikTok’s Chinese sister app Douyin in November last year. The star had run afoul of internet regulators many times for selling counterfeit goods, such as the health-giving bird’s nest soup that actually turned out to be just sugar water. Now that the age of the star livestreamer is well and truly over, Xinba and his company seem to be seeking out a new business model.

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1. Shorts and livestreams continue to fuel consumption, including domestic tourism

Chinese internet users spent an average of 187 minutes, or over 3 hours, on audio-visual applications (including streaming platforms like iQiyi, podcast platforms, and social media sites like Douyin) last year.

A whopping 71.2% of users say they have purchased products after watching short videos or livestreams, and 40% agreed with the statement “short videos and livestreams have become my main consumption channel”.

The number of users who say they regulatory watch travel videos almost doubled, from 28.1% in 2022 to 44.4% in 2023. Importantly, 27.9% said they had travelled or would travel to a destination because of watching content.

2. The volume of microdramas online has doubled

Microdramas are television series revamped for the social media age. Chinese television producers have taken note of the dominance of short video content and started producing series whose episodes are typically only a few minutes long, and posting them on social media platforms to great success.

Last year was a key growth year for the bourgeoning entertainment format. A total of 557 microdrama series were registered with the official regulator in 2023. 384 microdramas successfully went online throughout the year, doubling the number that went online in 2022.

According to the report, 39.9% of internet users said they frequently watch microdramas and 31.9% said they have paid to watch microdrama content.

3. The fastest-growing viewership segment is rural 

The past 12 months also saw the continuation of a trend that became apparent in 2022: rural viewership is now growing at a faster rate than urban viewership, thanks to China’s 77.5% internet penetration rate.

In 2023, the number of rural viewers accessing audio-visual content hit 320 million, representing around 67% of the total rural population and 6.8% growth on the previous year.

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The legislation would force TikTok’s owner ByteDance to either sell the app to a non-Chinese buyer within six months or get banned in the US. On March 13, Republicans and Democrats united to vote 352-65 in favour of the legislation, and President Biden has said he would sign off on it. A previous attempted TikTok ban by Trump in 2020 was blocked by federal courts, and the former president has since reversed his stance on the app. 

So what does the House of Representatives vote actually mean? Is TikTok now banned? Not quite yet. It still has to be passed by the Senate in order to be enshrined into law. This could be blocked by Majority Leader of the Senate, Chuck Schumer, who has not taken a clear stance on the issue, but stated he will not rush to push it through.

Whilst US lawmakers largely agree that TikTok’s Chinese ownership poses some degree of national security threat, opinions diverge on whether a wholesale ban on the app is an effective – or diplomatically wise – solution. “My concern is that if you try to deal with this by name, you’re playing a game of whack-a-mole, because what’s TikTok today, next week it’s TokTik or TicTak or whatever,” said Senator John Cornyn. It has also been noted that the Senate acts much more slowly than the House of Representatives.

If the Senate does pass the legislation, the ban is still far from complete. Analysts think it would be highly unlikely for TikTok to pursue divestment from ByteDance as China’s Ministry of Commerce said last year it would “firmly oppose” divestment. However, Bloomberg reported ahead of the vote that TikTok will exhaust all possible legal routes to challenge the legislation before even considering a divestment, a process that could take years.

The spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, Wang Wenbin, issued a stark warning to US lawmakers ahead of the vote, calling it “bullying behaviour”. In no uncertain terms, Wang voiced what many commentators and American TikTok users also fear: “In the end, this will inevitably come back to bite the United States itself.”

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The word “huh?” is often used for videos of scientific and technological advancement, such as livestreamers performing unbelievable tricks. Vlogger Moxin’s calligraphy video of writing down the entirety of Li Bai’s poem “Shu Dao Nan” with one unbroken stroke was the video that earned the most “Huh?”s  in the past year.

It was the 7th time Bilibili announced a “bullet chat” comment of the year. The announcement this year was made jointly with Art Exhibit China and the Chinese Character Museum. The one-character comment had already made it into the museum as part of the folk customs displays at the museum focusing on the Chinese written language. On Weibo, China’s Twitter equivalent, the topic “bullet chat of 2023” (#2023年度弹幕#) ranked number 45 on the Hot Search list with 20.25 million views.

The “bullet chat” (弹幕, “danmu/danmaku” lit. “bullet screen”) subtitle comments originated from Japanese sites like Niconico. Commenters can project their comments as subtitles which fly over the screen of the video. The “bullet screen” literally means barrage or a rain of bullets as these subtitles resemble bullets from old school shooting games that fly over the entire screen in different colours. Bilibili is among the first of the Chinese video platforms to adopt this and has been known for the entertaining comments from its user community.

Past “bullet chat” comments of the year include “graceful” (优雅) from 2022, “This broke my defences/I’m overwhelmed” (破防了) from 2021 and ”my youth is back” (爷青回) from 2020. The “bullet chat” has become more than just comments but is a part of the videos, with a dedicated community expressing and exchanging their thoughts and feelings. Many of those past comments of the years have seeped into daily usage online and offline.Exhibiting the comment of the year at the Chinese Character Museum reflects how the internet culture shapes how we communicate.  With social media buzzwords getting more ready recognition from official sources and everyday usage, there might be a new kind of balance between “on trend” and “dated” for marketers trying to harness their power.

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• A series of “country fair” documentaries were produced by short video platform Kuaishou in partnership with online travel agency platform JD Travel.
• Kuaishou blended popular cultural trends including comedy, fashion, food, and folk arts into this highly localised campaign.
• By connecting with folk cultures in different regions of China, Kuaishou is embracing the brand strategy of being “down-to-earth”.

Some say that the essence of China can be found in “gǎn jí (赶集)” or country fairs. These traditional weekly or monthly street marketplaces in rural areas bring people together to sell local or home-made products – from food to livestock to agricultural tools. But how can these deeply local traditions be integrated into brand marketing?

Kuaishou, a short video platform recently addressed this question. During this year’s National Day holiday, in collaboration with JD Travel, Kuaishou released a series of themed documentaries titled “Everything Gathers in Country Fairs” (wàn shì dà jí “万事大集”, same pronunciation as “everything will go well” in Chinese), highlighting diverse folk cultures in various Chinese provinces. 

The charm of small towns

Set in different small towns across China, Kuaishou captured the unique charisma of diverse regions. From the humour of the North to the vibrancy of the South and from the delicacy of the East to the spiciness of the West, Kuaishou produced four episodes focusing on country fairs in Xi’an, Guizhou, Shenyang and Qingdao, each guided by a local Kuaishou influencer.

• Shenyang: Zaohua Fair – An immersive comedic experience

The first episode, featuring the Zaohua Fair in Shenyang, emphasised comedy as a response to the rising trend of humour culture amongst Chinese youth. Filled with laughter, the Zaohua Fair was portrayed as an immersive comedy talk-show experience, where stall owners attracted customers by telling witty jokes. 

“The main downside of my product,” a stall-owner proudly stated in the documentary, “is that it’s simply too delicious.” Such clever remarks were peppered throughout the episode, making it particularly appealing to young audiences. 

Shenyang people, as well as other Northeastern Chinese, are well-known for having humour in their blood – even their accents and dialects contribute to the comedic culture. Moreover, Northeast China is the birthplace of the traditional comedy form known as “Er Ren Zhuan”, where two individuals team up as performers, making it an ideal backdrop for this campaign.

It is not surprising that Kuaishou chose comedy and humour as the starting point of this campaign. Over the last few years, comedy standup shows such as “Rock & Roast” have piqued the interest of young people in China. Originating as a form of monologue humour in American bars, in China, standup has been repackaged as a trendy, Western-style variety show.

Kuaishou has broken down the formalities of stand-up comedy with the Zaohua fair, as articulated in their documentary: “Humour can be found everywhere in life; there is no need to go out of your way to seek laughter.”

• Guizhou: Kaili Fair – A fashion show of Chinese folk arts

In Kaili, Guizhou, the focus shifted to fashion and colours. Closely related with local ethnic minority groups, traditional costumes, and handcrafts took centre stage at the fair. 

Kaili is said to be a place where “the God pours dyes up from the sky”. With vibrant bamboo baskets, silver headpieces, embroidered costumes, carpets, and dyed fabric featured in this episode, audiences will be mesmerised by the kaleidoscope of saturated hues and ever-changing forms. 

Kuaishou has transformed the fair into a lively fashion show, celebrating Kaili as a hub of folk arts and crafts: “They may not understand high-end customisation, but each of them wears exquisitely handcrafted custom Miao embroidery traditional clothing, which is the true luxury of their own culture.”

As the growing appreciation for Chinese traditional cultures and folk arts takes hold, Kuaishou is demonstrating its commitment through this campaign. Here, tradition can also be alluring and desire-driven, just as the episode title suggests: With all the colours in Kaili, this is “a country fair infused with dopamine”.

• Xi’an: Jiaodai Fair – A food lover’s paradise

Food is another essential element of a country fair. The final episode showcased Jiaodai, Xi’an, as a haven for carbohydrate enthusiasts in China. 

In Kuaishou’s campaign, the Jiaodai Fair stands out for its countless choices of local street snacks: Pepper soup with a Chinese doughnut, douhua (a silken tofu pudding), hand-sliced beef, fried spring onion pancakes… The Kuaishou food vlogger “Shi Xi’An Feng Wei” guided audiences through a feast which is unique to Xi’an alone.

Beyond food, Kuaishou highlighted a carefree lifestyle represented by the fair, echoing the local saying, “go to Jiaodai, have half a pound of beef and three ounces of alcohol!” Likewise, this sense of joy underscores what Kuaishou aims for its users to discover on its short video platform.

Down-to-earth branding strategy

Despite their differences, connecting with ordinary people was the overarching theme of this campaign, particularly those often underrepresented, as rural residents and small business owners became the protagonists of these documents. In addition to documentaries, Kuaishou created the hashtag “Everything Gathers in Country Fairs” as an interactive topic within its app, amassing around 1 billion views since 20 September. The term even briefly reached the top spot on Kuaishou’s primary list. 

Stepping back in time, Kuaishou’s journey began as a short video platform brimming with visually striking yet low-quality content. Although it gained popularity in rural areas, Kuaishou faced the stigma of being considered a “vulgar” platform, in particular because it ventured into urban markets.

However, just as a double-edged sword can have both positive and negative outcomes, this profound connection with a vast user base has evolved into Kuaishou’s distinctive advantage, setting it apart from other short video platforms.

Kuaishou’s country-fair themed campaign has undoubtedly proved it. By spotlighting country fairs, Kuaishou has provided a stage for representing the lifestyles and values of everyday people, strengthening its connection with users. It also serves as an example for other brands seeking to tap into various aspects of ordinary people’s daily lives. By exploring diverse, locally-rooted cultural events, brands can promote novel ways to resonate with the Chinese audience, from urban dwellers to those living in the countryside.

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An additional button called “My Reading” has also been embedded in an individual’s profile page, which serves as an entrance to a “Web Story Market” where users can browse and consume this textual content. The hashtag “Web Story” has garnered a whopping number of accumulated views on Douyin, amounting to over 14 billion, showing the huge appetite for such content amongst its existing users and explains the rationale for the series of moves.

A traffic pool in web stories

Such confidence may also stem from a more lucrative market of the overall web story sector in China. The 2021 Research Report on the Development of Chinese Online Literature published by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences found that the sector had reached a market scale valued at 30 billion RMB (4.34 billion USD) by the end of 2021 with over 502 million consumers of such content. This made up 48.6% of the total 1.03 billion netizens recorded in that year. 

Adding to the appeal is the fact that post-90s and post-00s are the backbones of the web story market, which are the cohorts that market players are keen to engage with. Not only are they interested in consuming such content but there is a growing enthusiasm amongst these demographics for contributing to the output, effectively making writing web stories an avocation for some of those young Chinese.

Yuewen Group – one of China’s major online publishing and digital reading platforms, which is a joint venture between the tech guru Tencent and Cloudary – reported that in 2021, 36% of the platform’s 9.4 million writers were post-95s with a year-on-year increase of 80% in authors of this age group, as per the group’s 2021 Persona of Web Story Author Report. Such interest amongst this demographic saw further growth in the following year, as Fanqie Novel, a reading app owned by another tech giant ByteDance reported that 65% of new writers landing on its platform in 2022 were post-90s.

In this vein, web stories are rising to be a new “traffic password” to draw in young users, which traditional tech firms have set their sights on. While existing online reading platforms are beefing up efforts in enriching their offerings, rushing to the race in recent years include Kuaishou, Douyin’s rival short video app, who introduced its independent novel reading app last September. This includes Zhihu, China’s answer to Quora, whose Yanyan Stories app went live a month before Douyin’s latest attempt.

Synergy between short videos and web stories

As more arrive to the battleground, short video platforms, on the other hand, are believed to be advantageous in bringing out an innovative way of online reading, as short videos are viewed to be a more effective medium for presenting the highlights of textual content while enabling a more engaging and concise delivery.

Meanwhile, the feature introduced by Douyin also addresses the copyright concerns that have bothered many creators tapping into web stories, as it enables direct landing on the original story page. Therefore, it encourages more users to produce relevant content, leveraging the large followers of web stories to drive its overall growth.

In addition, the small endeavour also allows better integration of ByteDance’s internal resources, creating another avenue for monetisation for the reading arm Fanqie Novel. Once interested viewers click on a link shared in a short video, they are taken to a preview page where a “Read the Story” button will redirect to a paid membership zone on Fanqie Novel for full access to a story. As such, it builds up a closed-loop ecosystem, capitalising on the lucrative user base of Douyin to pull off dual growth in viewership and readership for both platforms.

These efforts made by internet companies show the increasing appetite for incorporating web stories into their original niche, which signals the power this content bears in unleashing the growth potential for platforms and enabling them to deepen the penetration of their target audience.  

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Creators, whose content has been declared original, can enjoy benefits including comment ads revenue sharing, platform protection for original content, and priority recommendations. Creators will also be able to set up a paid content section, where followers will pay a monthly subscription fee to become a member and consume content, therefore, diversifying the avenue of monetisation for content creators.

The “Personal business card” of individuals’ Video Channels accounts is also set to be revamped to integrate the display of long audio and text-and-image content on top of existing features including the Video Channel homepage, products, videos, and livestream. This would allow a richer and more personalised presentation of a creator’s profile, increasing their online visibility.

In addition, it also incorporated a new feature known as “Ask questions” into the in-app “Search”. Bearing a resemblance to Zhihu, the Chinese Quora-like knowledge-sharing platform, the upgrade would allow creators to view questions most frequently asked by users and choose the ones they are interested in answering. Quality responses will enjoy priority display when a further search of the relevant question is conducted while users can like, share and follow involved creators.

Considering the number of monthly active users (MAUs) visiting the Search feature reached 800 million as of 2022, a 54% year-on-year increase, the new function would further the online exposure for content creators while also enhancing the interaction between creators and ordinary users.

The latest efforts show the crucial status Video Channels holds for WeChat, which was described as “the hope of the company” by CEO Pony Ma in a speech last year. The video arm saw online sales generated by its livestream surge by 800% in 2022 and an almost three-fold yearly increase in content creators who had achieved monetisation, according to Zhang Xiaochao, head of WeChat Channels. 

While the already large group of MAUs continued to grow into 1.3 billion (up 3.5% year-on-year), the time users spend on Video Channels has increased by three-fold, or 1.2 times longer than that spent on the basic feature Moments (a post-sharing feature known as “Friends’ Circle” in China), as per Liu Zhiping, former executive director at Tencent. In light of the progress, Video Channels is expected to produce an estimated revenue of 24 billion RMB by 2024 as per predictions from Zheshang Securities. And the latest endeavour will only accelerate the prospect.

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This program is embedded in Kuaishou’s own ecosystem, aiming to connect users through online content and featured services, promoted through short videos and live stream. In celebration of the program’s release, storefronts in partnership with Kuaishou offered group buying coupons for users. To better integrate the local lifestyle ecosystem, Kuaishou merged its e-commerce team with marketing in a bid to divert online traffic in a more efficient way.

Apart from the self-operated program, users can also place food orders through third-party platforms such as takeout retailers Meituan. Kuaishou users can easily land on the checkout page of Meituan to complete certain product purchases via links displayed in short videos they’ve watched.

The local lifestyle market commands a vast room with lucrative business opportunities, amassing a value of 19.5 trillion RMB ($2.81 trillion) with an expectation to reach 35.3 trillion RMB ($5.09 trillion) by 2025. As such domestic social media players are scrambling to grab a foothold, with WeChat included, initiating takeout services in China and Douyin dipping its toes in the online supermarket segment. 

As short-video platforms, Kuaishou and Douyin possess a noticeable edge compared to other contenders, enabling them both a smooth entry into the takeaway business, providing consumers with seamless experiences when placing orders while watching videos or live streams. 

In contrast to Douyin, Kuaishou’s “Lao’tie culture” (refers to one’s close friend in northern China) has equipped the platform with benefits which resonates strongly with users and thus, witnessed a 70% returning consumer rate. Furthermore, Kuaishou has already expanded into the lower-tier marketplace in China, with 54.5% of its users coming from tier-3 and even lower areas.

By timely tapping into the territory, Kuaishou still has opportunities to carry out its lifestyle-oriented program and promote new practices with a sturdy user base and strong consumer bond.

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