China’s 618 shopping festival is shifting from pure price wars to quality-price balance, with longer campaign cycles, simpler rules, stronger platform tools, and full-funnel content driving better conversion.

Discover China marketing market insights, key China consumer trends, emotional consumption, experience-led marketing, appearance value, health reassurance and what they mean for brand strategy.

This week, China’s social media is centring on four key themes: upcoming holiday planning, post-May Day consumption momentum, seasonal lifestyle content, and wider travel-cost and safety awareness. Weibo and Douyin are driving attention around the Dragon Boat Festival break, summer mood-led travel, live holiday experiences and fuel-price expectations, while Xiaohongshu, Baidu and Zhihu add stronger focus on emotional marketing, visual travel memories, cross-border sentiment

CTD’s Q1-anchored outlook shows a China outbound market that is expanding again — but the commercial opportunity is concentrated in the destinations that can win higher-value trips, not just more arrivals.

Thousands of domestic train services added on last day of ‘golden week’ to meet record demand, and high energy costs affect consumer spending

Emotional gifting in China is becoming more personal, more scenario-led and more content-driven. Here is how Mother’s Day and 520 are shaping brand marketing, consumer choice and gifting strategy in 2026.

China’s outbound recovery is no longer the story. The bigger question for 2026 is where Chinese travellers will spend, and how much of that wallet travel retail can realistically capture.

This week, China’s social media is centring on four key themes: May Day travel pressure, flexible leisure demand, cyber safety, and wider energy and security uncertainty. Weibo and Douyin are driving attention around holiday rail services, low-effort getaways, tea-culture trips and online scam prevention, while Baidu and Zhihu add stronger focus on record travel flows, accommodation disputes, Japan-related security concerns and the possible knock-on effect of energy shifts on

Canada has permitted an ‘incremental increase’ in flights to China, but airlines may be reluctant to add services amid the wars in Ukraine and Iran