Weblog with daily updates of the news on a frugal, fair and beautiful China, from the perspective of internet entrepreneur, new media advisor and president of the China Speakers Bureau Fons Tuinstra
Practical visionair and ChinaBriefs author Bjorn Ognibeni speaks at the E-commerce expo 2026 in Berlin about what Western e-commerce companies can learn from China. While Silicon Valley perfects Agentic AI demos, Chinese platforms are already deploying AI at scale – and making money doing it, he tells his audience
China’s shopping malls illustrate a profound change in consumer sentiment as EV showrooms are replaced by new features giving way to emotional value, says consumer expert Ashley Dudarenokin the Jing Daily.
Ashley Dudarenok:
When an EV showroom closes, it is increasingly being replaced by a brand selling something entirely intangible: emotional value.
Pop Mart, the Beijing-based designer toy maker, is aggressively expanding its physical footprint, moving from automated vending machines and small kiosks into massive, experiential ground-floor flagships. The financial backing for this expansion is staggering. In late March 2026, Pop Mart reported that its full-year 2025 revenue had surged by nearly 185% to RMB 37.1 billion ($5.4 billion), driven largely by the global phenomenon of its Labubu character series.
The exit bans send a message—that any AI company founded in China, with business operations still in the country, are likewise reachable by Beijing, Ke Yan, head of Singapore’s DZT Research, told Newsweek.
Beijing’s regulators then treat the deal as a technology export, arguing that the team, model weights, and training data were developed in China, regardless of where the company is legally based.
“Once they were physically in China, Singapore’s corporate domicile became irrelevant,” he said.
Beijing is most concerned on whether strategically sensitive technologies developed in China—and the talent and data behind them—continue to be transferred offshore through corporate restructuring in Singapore, Winston Ma, New York University law school adjunct professor and the author of The Digital War, told Newsweek.
The Chinese authorities have made clear this “Singapore washing” will not automatically insulate any deal from government oversight, Ma stated.
“The real challenge is defining what counts as ‘strategic’ in a fast-moving AI landscape—much like how TikTok’s seemingly goofy videos initially appeared far removed from national security concerns—until their underlying data and algorithmic power came into sharper focus.”
China’s leading e-commerce firm, Alibaba, runs two different retail platforms. Consumer expert Ashley Dudarenokexplains on her website how both platforms, while owned by the same company, differ profoundly in their approaches.
Ashley Dudarenok:
Tmall vs Taobao describes the two primary retail platforms inside Alibaba’s ecommerce ecosystem. Taobao operates as a discovery marketplace where consumers explore products and compare sellers. Tmall functions as a brand-controlled retail platform where verified flagship stores convert that discovery into trusted purchases.
Search interest around Tmall vs Taobao often assumes the two platforms compete for the same role inside China’s e-commerce market. In reality, Alibaba structured them as complementary layers within a unified commerce system.
China’s financial authorities shocked the financial world by blocking a 2 billion dollar deal by Meta to purchase AI startup Manus. Financial expert Winston Ma, adjunct professor of law at New York University, explains at CNBC how unwinding a done deal might be a landmark decision for China, but in no way exceptional, as the US has a longstanding practice of cancelling deals for national security reasons.
Branding expert Ashley Dudarenok uses Alibaba’s Tmall as an example for brands that successfully use e-commerce to generate sales, she explains on her website ‘Social platforms generate interest. The Tmall platform converts that interest into purchases through brand-controlled retail infrastructure,” she writes.
Ashley Dudarenok:
China’s e-commerce environment has changed rapidly in recent years. Product discovery now happens widely on Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and other content platforms where creators influence demand, reflecting the rapid rise of social commerce in China. When consumers reach the purchase stage, many still complete the transaction on Tmall China.
The platform provides a structured retail environment where brands operate verified stores, manage promotions, and control the final transaction experience. This structure explains why Tmall ecommerce remains central to brand strategy in 2026.
Social platforms generate interest. The Tmall platform converts that interest into purchases through brand-controlled retail infrastructure.
China veteran and Sinica podcast host Kaiser Kuo discusses at the Asia Society in Hong Kong the balance in the relationship between China and the US. Ying Chan interviews him.
China was pretty well off in the first month of the Iran war, but its economy is now feeling the backlash that other economies already felt earlier because of the lack of energy, says Shanghai-based business analyst Shaun Rein at the Thinkers’ Forum. Now the global economy is going to hit a wall, he adds.
Marketing expert Ashley Dudarenok dives on het weblog into the successful Chinese platform Xiaohongshu, outside China also known as the Little Red Book or RedNote. Now that the platform is expanding beyond China and Chinese travellers, the world is taking note of this feature.
Ashley Dudarenok:
When people search what is RedNote, they are often trying to understand why this platform appears so often in discussions about China’s consumer trends. RedNote refers to a lifestyle community where millions of users document their real experiences with products, routines, travel, and everyday purchases. These posts create a large archive of practical reviews that readers explore before deciding what to buy.
Interest in RedNote expanded beyond China in early 2025, when the platform saw a surge in international attention. During the period when a potential TikTok ban in the United States was widely discussed, the platform reportedly added nearly3.4 million new US users in a single day andmore than 700,000 people within 48 hours, according to Reuters.
This sudden influx introduced the Xiaohongshu ecosystem to a broader global audience and helped establish RedNote as the international reference point in media discussions about the platform.
This article explains how RedNote evolved into a trusted research space within China’s digital commerce ecosystem. It examines how notes guide product discovery, how user experiences influence purchasing confidence, and why the platform plays a distinctive role in China’s social commerce landscape.
While spending of China’s consumers is still tight, some issues like sustainability make a difference in retail, says consumer expert Ashley Dudarenok in ChoZan. She explains why green should also be practical for them.
Ashley Dudarenok:
Sustainable retail in China is entering a more commercially serious stage. In ChoZan’s Top 12 China Consumer Trends in 2026 report, practical green purchasing appears as a mainstream consumer shift, not a niche lifestyle choice.
The key insight is simple. Chinese consumers increasingly care about sustainability, yet they still judge green products through the same filters they apply to any other purchase: value for money, quality, safety, convenience, and proof.
That matters because many brands still speak about sustainability in broad, abstract terms. Chinese consumers are asking a more grounded question. Does this product reduce waste, lower running costs, feel safer, or make daily life simpler?
When the answer is clear, adoption can move fast. When the answer is vague, shoppers move on.
Younger shoppers are helping push this change into the mainstream. They are more likely to look for recyclable materials, lower waste packaging, and products that align with a more responsible lifestyle.
At the same time, they are highly selective. They expect green claims to stand up to scrutiny, and they are quick to punish brands that charge more without offering a clear reason.
For retail leaders, that means sustainable practices in retail cannot sit in a side campaign. They need to show up in core product choices, packaging, sourcing, and channel design.
How far is China ahead of the Western world? Bjorn Ognibeni advised German companies over the past twenty years on their China policies and looks into this question at the Evolve Commerce Club.
Innovation expert Ashley Dudarenok dives into Doubao AI, one of the main contenders in China’s AI race for ChoZan. “ByteDance integrates the assistant into its social, cloud, and hardware ecosystems,” she writes.
Ashley Dudarenok:
Doubao AI has become a central figure in China’s generative AI race. Developed by ByteDance, the company behind TikTok and Douyin, it was launched in August 2023 and quickly rose to prominence. By early 2026, it had over 155 million weekly active users, more than any other AI chatbot in China.
During the Lunar New Year holiday in February 2026, the app’s daily active users surpassed 100 million. This surge was driven by a partnership with the Spring Festival Gala, during which the assistant handled 1.9 billion queries in a single evening. These numbers place Doubao AI among the world’s largest generative AI platforms.
Many international observers still ask what Doubao is and what its meaning is in the AI ecosystem. In simple terms, Doubao AI is ByteDance’s generative AI assistant and model platform designed to power chat, automation, and multimodal applications across consumer and enterprise environments.
To understand why it is so influential, one must look beyond the simple idea of a chatbot and consider how ByteDance operates within the ecosystem of Chinese social media platforms, where content, discovery, and digital services intersect.
ByteDance integrates the assistant into its social, cloud, and hardware ecosystems. This article explores what Doubao AI is, how its technology works, its capabilities, how it compares with global peers, and how businesses can evaluate its relevance in 2026.
If you want to understand why China is pulling ahead in the humanoid race, don’t start with the robots. Start with what’s underneath them.
Supply chain speed is the advantage: In Shenzhen, a robotics startup can source high-torque actuators, precision harmonic drives, and rare-earth magnet motors within a 30-minute drive. This “half-hour supporting circle” means prototypes that take Western companies 18 months to iterate can be revised in 3–6 months.
Real-world data is the edge: China has established a growing network of humanoid robot training facilities, including two national-level centers in Beijing and Shanghai, with regional hubs across the country. These facilities are collectively amassing millions of real-world training data points annually. And these aren’t sanitized lab environments; they’re 1:1 replicas of real factories, warehouses, and retail spaces.
Clear standards are the shortcut: On February 28, 2026, China released its first national standard system for humanoid robotics, covering six core areas: foundational standards, brain-like computing, hardware components, whole-machine systems, applications, and safety ethics. This isn’t bureaucracy for its own sake but a playbook for scale. As industry moves from the “0 to 1” phase into “1 to 10,” standards are what keep everyone from reinventing the wheel.
The results are measurable. According to the International Data Corporation, China’s embodied intelligence robot market will top $11 billion in 2026. The country’s service and consumer robotics manufacturers, meanwhile, are expected to account for more than 85% of global shipments.
Some rumours suggest China will use the ongoing geopolitical tension to prepare for a takeover of Taiwan. Wrong, says Shanghai-based business analyst Shaun Rein, author of The Split: Finding the Opportunities in China’s Economy in the New World Order, in a wide-ranging podcast with Cyrus Janssen at the Singjup0st. “Every six months,” says Rein, “somebody hires me since the late 90s, saying, This is the perfect time for Taiwan to be invaded and taken over by mainland China.’ And so every six months for the last 29 years, I’ve been giving speeches, keynotes, workshop sessions, because I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon.”
The Singjupost:
SHAUN REIN: So for your audience who don’t know me, I’m actually American, but I’ve been in China for most of the last 29 years. And one of the ways that I’ve made a lot of money, Cyrus, frankly, is every six months, somebody hires me ever since the late 90s, saying, “This is the perfect time for Taiwan to be invaded and taken over by mainland China.” And so every six months for the last 29 years, I’ve been giving speeches, keynotes, workshop sessions, because I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon.
I remember in 2022, at the height of COVID, the Chinese economy was probably in a recession. Even though the official figures didn’t say that, people were miserable. That would have been a great time for the CPC to invade Taiwan to distract people from the overhang of COVID as well as from the weak economy.
There are a number of reasons why, Cyrus, that I don’t view a military invasion to be imminent. The first, and this is a little bit more touchy, but you got to remember there are nine people on the Central Military Commission. This is the highest military commission in China. Seven of the nine have been arrested or publicly investigated in the last year and a half for corruption. Now, I don’t know if it’s factional fighting or if it’s truly corruption. It could truly be corruption because the military was rotten to the core over the last several decades. But what it means is when you take out seven of the nine top military leaders and you only have two left, and one of them is Xi Jinping himself, who’s obviously not a military leader, I’m not sure that you have the military leadership in place to launch something like a Taiwan invasion. That’s the first point.
The second point is China, I think, likes to do more of a “buy by influence” approach. Now, what do I mean by this? In Xinjiang and Tibet, these two regions did have a lot of ethnic unrest 10, 15 years ago. We have to be honest about that. So what did China do? Well, they launched huge programs to build up the medical care sectors, to build up the education sectors and build up infrastructure. They invested billions, if not hundreds of billions of dollars into Tibet and Xinjiang. Essentially, their idea was make the life of these minorities better and gain the support from the elites in these regions to support the CPC. And it’s worked fantastically, as we’ve talked about in the past.
I’ve been to Tibet and Xinjiang three times, and probably the most optimistic consumers in China are actually the ethnic minorities, the Tibetans and the Uyghurs in these two provinces, because now they have a good quality of life.
Now, what has China done? They’ve done the same thing with Hong Kong. When they took over Hong Kong from the British in 1997, instead of calling it a governor, instead of calling it a mayor, they called the head of Hong Kong the chief executive, because they wanted to show the people of Hong Kong that they were pro business still. Now, here’s what China did — they gave the tycoons like Li Ka Shing, the Quok family, the Chung family, the best property locations in China and helped them make a lot of money. If you look at Huaihai Road or Wangfujing in Beijing, the best prime locations are all controlled by Hong Kong tycoons because basically China wanted to buy their support.
Now it was a lot harder to work in Hong Kong because Hong Kong per capita GDP is higher than mainland China’s, because there’s a lot of Christianity and Cardinal Zen, who was the Catholic cardinal there, was very anti-CPC and would be one of the harshest critics. So it was very hard to buy the support of the Hong Kong people, which is why you saw the protests in 2014 with the umbrella protests and then the terrorism and rioting in 2019.
So China now, though, has been slowly able to succeed in buying the support of Hong Kongers who’ve stayed in Hong Kong by integrating Hong Kong with Greater Bay. I’ve spent a lot of time in Hong Kong in the last six months and Stephen Roach was wrong, 100%. Hong Kong is not dead. It’s booming again. It was the largest IPO market in 2025. It’s electric because China was trying to help the people of Hong Kong through economic benefits.
So that was kind of a long winded answer. But let’s go back to Taiwan.
When it comes to Taiwan, Cyrus, I view that China is trying to give a lot of economic incentives to the people of Taiwan. So in Fujian Province, the province that’s closest to Taiwan, they’ve given housing, education and medical benefits to any Taiwanese compatriots who decide to move to Fujian.
Now, most importantly, you need to look at Taiwan’s political system, which is really divided into two — the DPP, who are currently in charge, and the current president has another five year term. But when you look at the KMT or the Guomindang, they actually have really good relations with the CPC right now. The new chairwoman of the KMT actually earlier this week said she would like to come and meet with Xi Jinping himself. The Vice Chairman of the KMT over the last couple of years has been to China and has been treated like a hero. And even more importantly, Cyrus, is President Ma — the former President of Taiwan — who has come into mainland China, been treated like a hero and met with Xi Jinping himself.
So it’s a long winded answer. But what I expect to happen is China is going to try to dole out more and more economic incentives to the Taiwanese to gain their support like they did in Tibet, Xinjiang, and starting to get in Hong Kong. And they’re going to wait and see. Will the KMT win the presidency in several years? Because then you might be able to get a one country, two systems integration in Taiwan if the KMT is in charge, in the same way that China was able to do it with Hong Kong.
At the end of the day, Cyrus, the Chinese are not warmongering like the Americans. They view that the Taiwanese are their cousins and they don’t want to see any death. So I’m not concerned. Now, you can ask me this in six months and I’m sure some investment banks will do that. And I’ll write that $50,000 check again for a keynote.
Shanghai-based business analyst Shaun Rein looks at the impact the Iran war might have on China if the hostilities go on for two months or more. The fallout might last for years to come, not only for the US but also for China, he tells OAN.
The demands of China’s consumers have changed profoundly, says marketing expert Ashley Dudarenok, in an interview at CNBC. “People are not just buying things,” she said at CNBC in a phone call. “They’re buying feelings, they’re buying identity, they’re buying a sense of connection.”
CNBC:
“People are not just buying things,” said Ashley Dudarenok, founder of digital consultancy ChoZan told CNBC in a phone call. “They’re buying feelings, they’re buying identity, they’re buying a sense of connection.”…
Over the recent Chinese New Year holiday, data from ChoZan shows that consumers spent significantly less on traditional staples like festive food gifts (known as nian huo), and more on unconventional expenses, like travel experiences and cosmetics compared to the same period in 2023.
“What people used to buy back in the day, like liquor and bulk nuts … were all about social obligations and tradition. Right now, people buy gift boxes, they buy designer toys … and people don’t frown upon that,” Dudarenok said.
This shift from obligatory to more discretionary spending over China’s largest holiday exemplified broader shifts in consumer norms, according to Dudarenok, with Chinese consumers increasingly looking to satisfy desires for personal fulfillment, over more “rational” purchases…
China’s rising costs of living have also dovetailed with record low birth rates in 2025, adding to a growing sense of loneliness among many in the country.
Compounded, these pressures have instilled in the average Chinese consumer “a sense of crisis,” Dudarenok said, pushing many to redirect spending toward things that “bring [them] joy.”
