Milk: that white gold that strengthens your bones and teeth, can improve your skin and even lower the risk of obesity. In China, renowned doctors and even the Government have advocated drinking milk to build the body’s immune system to help fend off the dreaded COVID-19.

A WeChat post claiming Yili and Mengniu achieved their dominance in China by manipulating industry standards and silencing opponents has gone viral

Although China may have the second highest GDP of any country, when divided among its 1.4 billion citizens, it ranks down at number 65, just under Mexico and below the global average according to IMF 2019 estimates.

China Internet Infographic

$200 million. That's what China's fastest growing and second-most popular ecommerce platform Pinduoduo (PDD) invested in appliance and electronics retailer Gome last week.

Every crisis drives the need for creative solutions to solve newfound issues. COVID-19 has provided many examples where businesses have been forced to re-think their go-to-market strategy. The most agile businesses, who have done what they can to look after their employees and customers, are likely to come out ahead when this is all over.

Every business in China, whether foreign or domestic, should have digital presence on WeChat. What started as an instant messaging app in 2011 has now become one of the most popular platforms for building brand awareness and generating leads.

WeChat has finally created its answer to the gaping hole in its content ecosystem. WeChat Channels provides Tencent’s answer to the short-form video/image content dominated by the likes of Douyin, Kuaishou and Little Red Book.

Isn’t it amazing what a coronavirus outbreak can do to online usage habits. The infographic below illustrates how China's online millions (netizens) have altered their behaviour, with most of the country being homebound over the past few weeks. In the three weeks from Jan 14, online usage grew over 20% to 6.11 billion hours – over 6 hours per Chinese online.

As 2019 draws to a close, it's fair to say that it has been a year of twists and turns - even by Chinese standards. With the backdrop of a slowing economy and prolonged trade war, we're happy to say that Chinese consumers have remained the main driver of the economy, spending over 8% more than they did last year, fuelled by a healthy dose of credit.

The first ten months of 2019 showed Chinese consumer spending is still chugging along, with retail growing at a healthy 8.1% (9% if you don’t include cars). This was further reinforced by last week’s Singles’ Day which saw purchases grow by 27% from last year’s festival.

With the curtain already up for this year’s Singles’ Day (the first without Jack Ma), expect to hear more about Alibaba over the next month. Done well, the Singles’ Day/Double-11 extravaganza can be a powerful event to raise awareness and trial of your hero products, and shift some large volumes.

Chinese policy is usually a barometer for businesses and Chinese consumer behaviour, and the latest Healthy China Action Plan 2019-2030 is no exception.

Marketers, sales managers, product developers and strategists the world over are increasingly using data to help form decisions. Fortunately in China, we have a greater depth and breadth of data than anywhere else. Not only do Chinese use their smartphones (and faces) more frequently, across a broader array of online and offline occasions, they are also among the least concerned about data privacy globally. China Skinny uses our own in-house tools to tap into China’s vast banks of data to provide macro and granular views of consumers’ preferences and trends. These can impact everything from communications, branding and product development, to the channels and influencers you use.

In 2012 in the city of Wuhu, Anhui, a former street vendor and motorcycle taxi operator named Liaoyuan Zhang, left his job selling nuts to start his own nut company. In just 65 days, the company – Three Squirrels – became the top selling nuts brand on Tmall and within a couple of years, was said to be the top-selling food brand online. On Singles’ Day last year, it took less than 10 minutes to sell ¥100 million ($14.2 million) worth of snacks. The recently-listed company now has a market cap of close to $3 billion.

It doesn’t have the sexiness of livestreaming, or the sizzle of Singles’ Day, but one of the most important components of China’s ecommerce and New Retail boom is the thankless task of making it all happen behind the scenes. China’s logistics infrastructure is experiencing some of the biggest, yet behind-the-scenes, changes in the country’s retail industry. Chinese logistics are evolving from fragmented and rudimentary systems, to consolidated ones driven by the internet-connected smart devices, robots and real-time end-to-end tracking and traceability.

WeChat now boasts 1.1 billion active users, with most being in China. That’s great news for Tencent who have prodigious insights into the online, offline and commerce behaviour of a large swath of Chinese consumers. Yet its almost-100% saturation of China’s online population also presents challenges to Tencent, who is having to shift its strategy from growth by acquisition to extending the utility of WeChat and its data. To make things tougher, AI-driven competitors such as Douyin are cannibalising the screen time users spend on WeChat through services that are easier to use and more entertaining.

Remember when you’d see the big tricycles stacked metres high with polystyrene, rubbish and furniture cruising the streets? Or the vividly-coloured Facekinis poolside or on the beach? Or how about the infants with split pants on a cold Beijing day? They were all China novelties that have largely disappeared from the bigger cities. Yet with each disappearing quirk, a new curiosity has arisen to ensure that there is never a dull day in China.