China’s e-commerce ecosystem is very complex and diverse. There are a wide range of e-commerce platforms addressing different types of audiences across different geographical locations, presenting different features, and selling different types of products. The most popular ones are:

• Tmall. Leading e-commerce platform owned by Alibaba. It caters to consumers seeking authentic, high-quality products from established brands and retailers, through official brand stores and large-scale retailers. This is what makes it differ from Taobao, which instead hosts individual and small-scale sellers. Tmall Global is Tmall’s CBEC arm: even though it is perfectly integrated into Tmall’s app (so it is not a separate app), EU exporters interested in selling via CBEC must interface with the Tmall Global team.
• JD.com. Another leading e-commerce platform, renowned for its robust logistics network and focus on quality and authenticity. It is a direct competitor to Tmall as it operates via the B2C model from established brands and official stores. Traditionally, JD.com is renowned for its focus on beauty, fashion, children and health products as well as home appliances and consumer electronics. JD International is the CBEC extension of JD.com, also perfectly integrated within the main JD app.
• Xiaohongshu / Little Red Book (commonly called RED). It is a mobile-only application, a sort of Instagram (but much more) established in 2013 as a social media and lifestyle platform, but it has gradually grown into a social e-commerce platform, including CBEC. Xiaohongshu specialises in providing reviews and recommendations through pictures and video posts, socialisation and interaction with the community, and a platform for e-commerce. Thus, Xiaohongshu’s e-commerce and CBEC components are primarily used to read reviews and feedback products, thanks to the very active engagement of its users as well as Key Opinion Leaders (KOL) or Key Opinion Consumers (KOC). Xiaohongshu is widely used by Chinese citizens residing abroad, and therefore can be effectively leveraged by EU brands even if they are not yet in China.
• Douyin. It is the original, parent version in China of TikTok. It is extremely popular, and has also recently added CBEC features.
• WeChat. Although the focus of this “super app” is not on e-commerce or CBEC, the app has companies may open subscription accounts through which they share content such as articles, images and videos (marketing and branding). Companies may also establish mini-programmes, a sort of mini-apps perfectly integrated within and easily accessible from the WeChat ecosystem, either through direct search or scanning a QR code. Mini-programmes thus remove the need to install multiple apps for different purposes. Online shops can also be built as mini-programmes, or alternatively can be built as HTML5 websites optimised for WeChat.

Other platforms, such as Alibaba.com, Aliexpress, Temu and Shein, are e-commerce platforms targeting international consumers to buy Chinese goods. Therefore, these are less relevant for EU companies to access the Chinese market.