Three platforms, three jobs
WeChat is a messaging app that doubles as infrastructure. Brands run Official Accounts, where subscription accounts can push one broadcast a day and service accounts four a month, publish long-form articles, sell through Mini Programs and post short video on Channels. Douyin is ByteDance's Chinese short-video platform, separate from TikTok, built on vertical video and livestream selling. Xiaohongshu, also called RED, is where people research purchases through image-led notes, typically portrait, with detailed first-person text, strongest in beauty, fashion, food and travel. A single global asset set serves none of them well; each needs content made for its own habits.
Labels are mandatory
The Measures for Labelling AI-Generated Synthetic Content, issued in March 2025 by the Cyberspace Administration of China with three other authorities, took effect on 1 September 2025 alongside the mandatory national standard GB 45438-2025. Generated text, images, audio and video need an explicit label that people can see or hear, placed where the rules specify, and an implicit label written into the file's metadata. Platforms must check for labels and add them where missing, users must declare AI content when they publish, and removing labels is prohibited. These sit on top of the 2023 rules on deep synthesis and on generative AI services.
KOLs, KOCs and paid-content rules
Chinese social commerce runs on creators. Key opinion leaders bring reach; key opinion consumers, ordinary users with smaller followings, bring reviews that feel like a friend's advice. Brands often book both through the platforms' own marketplaces, such as Pugongying on Xiaohongshu and Xingtu on Douyin. The Internet Advertising Measures, in force since 1 May 2023, require advertising, including paid creator posts with purchase links, to be identifiable as advertising. The Advertising Law bans absolute terms such as best, national-level or highest-level. Generated content must never pose as a consumer review; that is a quick way to lose an account and invite enforcement.
Localisation beyond translation
Copy should be written natively in Simplified Chinese, in the register of each platform, rather than translated from an English master. The calendar differs too: Chinese New Year, 520 on 20 May, the 618 shopping festival in June, Qixi and Double 11 on 11 November all need their own creative. Colour and number symbolism, local faces and settings, and China-specific packs and product names matter. In the studio, the brand hub can hold the Advertising Law's banned absolute terms as banned words, product-lock keeps China-specific packs exact, and a per-asset record of which model made what makes consistent explicit and implicit labelling practical.
Updated 25 September 2026