Problems and opportunities in the entertainment industry in China

China’s Entertainment Industry Shift and What It Means for Tourism

In 2022, China’s entertainment industry underwent a regulatory and structural transformation that would have seemed impossible five years earlier. New government guidelines redefined what content was permissible, which stars were promotable, and how platforms were required to manage their content. Radio, television, internet platforms, and all actors in the entertainment world: stars, fans, and content creators, were affected simultaneously.

President Xi Jinping’s eight-point entertainment guidelines were not just content restrictions. They were a signal about the direction of China’s digital culture: toward content that promotes “core socialist values,” away from excessive wealth display, celebrity cult culture, and entertainment seen as culturally harmful. The platforms that adapted fastest, including Douyin, Bilibili, and a reformed version of Xiaohongshu, have emerged in 2025-2026 as the dominant cultural distribution channels in China.

For tourism and destination marketing, the implications of this shift are specific and actionable. The entertainment platforms that survived and thrived in the post-2022 environment are different in character from what came before. Understanding these platforms as they exist today, not as they were in 2019, is the starting point for effective Chinese market strategy.

2025-2026 Stats Worth Knowing

• Douyin reached 800 million daily active users in 2025, up from 750 million in 2024, with travel content representing the #3 most-watched category by total watch time (ByteDance, Q4 2025)
• Xiaohongshu’s outdoor and nature content vertical grew 89% in 2025, the fastest-growing category on the platform, driven by the post-regulation shift toward experience-based aspirational content (Xiaohongshu internal data, reported Q1 2026)
• Bilibili travel and cultural documentary content generated 12.4 billion views in 2025, with average watch time per travel video exceeding 18 minutes (Bilibili annual report, 2025)
• Chinese outbound travel for cultural and heritage experiences grew 47% in 2025 versus 2024, outpacing general leisure travel recovery (CNTA / Ctrip combined data, January 2026)

The Platform Winners of China’s Entertainment Transformation

Douyin is the dominant short video platform, with 800 million daily active users as of 2025. Post-2022, Douyin has actively promoted content aligned with government priorities: rural revitalization, traditional culture, outdoor nature, Chinese heritage. This has created a content environment where travel and destination content performs very well. The platform’s algorithm rewards content that generates emotional engagement, time spent watching, and sharing behavior, all of which high-quality travel content achieves naturally.

Bilibili has evolved from an anime and gaming platform to a broad-interest platform for China’s younger educated demographic. Long-form travel documentaries, destination deep-dives, and “moving to [city]” video series perform consistently well. Bilibili’s audience is more intellectually engaged and more willing to watch 15-20 minute content than Douyin’s audience, making it ideal for complex destination storytelling.

Xiaohongshu (RedNote) has become the primary platform for travel discovery and planning. The platform’s move toward authentic, review-based content, accelerated by the 2022 photoshop controversy, has made it the most trusted source for Chinese travelers researching destinations. Its search function is now used as a travel planning engine by millions of users monthly. Our Xiaohongshu marketing service covers the full setup and content approach for destination clients.

What Chinese Consumers Want from Entertainment and Travel Content

Post-regulation, the content that performs best in China’s entertainment channels emphasizes authenticity, cultural depth, and genuine experience over conspicuous consumption and celebrity-driven aspiration. For travel content specifically, this means:

Nature and outdoor experiences have surged in relevance. Content showing remote landscapes, hiking routes, national parks, and wilderness travel consistently outperforms urban luxury content in the post-2022 environment. Chinese audiences who have been told that conspicuous wealth display is culturally problematic have genuinely shifted toward aspirational content about experience and nature.

Traditional culture content, both Chinese and international, performs very well. Chinese travelers interested in experiencing non-Chinese traditional cultures (Maori in New Zealand, ancient Rome, traditional Japanese arts) are a growing segment whose interest is partly driven by a broader cultural shift toward heritage and depth over surface consumption.

Agency Case Studies: What Actually Worked

Case 1: New Zealand Tourism, Nature Campaign 2024

New Zealand’s tourism marketing team asked us to help them capture the post-2022 Chinese traveler who was moving away from pure shopping-and-city-hotel trips toward outdoor and nature experiences. We built a Douyin and Xiaohongshu content program focused entirely on the outdoor category: specific hiking routes with honest difficulty ratings, fjord experiences with real weather information, Maori cultural experiences explained with genuine respect rather than superficial promotion. The outdoor content vertical on Xiaohongshu was receiving algorithm-level boost at the time. Result: New Zealand-tagged content from the campaign received 8.4 million views on Douyin over six weeks. Xiaohongshu saves: 34,000 across 18 posts. Most relevant metric: Trip.com searches for New Zealand from Chinese users increased 41% in the two months following the campaign versus the same period the prior year.

Case 2: Japanese Heritage Town, Cultural Campaign 2025

A small heritage town in Gifu Prefecture wanted to attract Chinese cultural tourists rather than the standard Tokyo-Kyoto-Osaka itinerary traveler. We ran a Bilibili-first campaign, which is unusual but made sense for this destination: the content was a three-part documentary-style series on traditional craft production in the town, with Chinese narration and subtitles, average runtime 22 minutes per episode. Total views: 1.1 million on Bilibili over three months. More importantly, average watch time was 19 minutes, meaning people were actually watching rather than dropping off after 30 seconds. The town’s guesthouse association reported that Bilibili was cited as the discovery source by 28% of Chinese visitors in the following quarter, up from zero in the previous year.

Case 3: Destination Board, Chinese Cultural Calendar Campaign 2025

A European destination board approached us for help maintaining Douyin presence across the year rather than just during peak season. We built a Chinese cultural calendar content plan: Mid-Autumn Festival content showing the destination at harvest time, Chinese New Year content connecting the destination’s winter landscapes to the holiday mood, Dragon Boat Festival content about water and outdoor activities. Each calendar-aligned piece rode significant organic traffic from Chinese users actively consuming cultural content around those dates. Total organic reach across the 12-month calendar program: 22 million views on Douyin, at a content production cost of approximately 15% of what an equivalent paid advertising campaign would have cost for the same reach.

What We Got Wrong at First

When we first started advising destinations on post-2022 China platform strategy, we overcorrected. We told clients to stop all luxury positioning and shift entirely to nature and culture content. This was too blunt. Chinese travelers did not stop wanting luxury experiences after 2022. They became more selective about how luxury is framed and more resistant to overt wealth signaling. The content shift required was from “look how expensive this is” to “look how special this experience is.” Subtle difference in framing, significant difference in platform performance.

We also initially underestimated how much the Chinese cultural calendar content format would outperform standard destination content. We thought it would feel forced or artificial. In practice, Chinese platform users are highly engaged around cultural calendar events, and destination content that genuinely connects a place to a Chinese cultural moment feels relevant rather than opportunistic. The data proved this quickly and we adjusted our content planning approach accordingly.

A third mistake: we assumed Weibo was finished as a platform for destination marketing. We told two clients to stop investing in Weibo entirely and shift 100% to Douyin and Xiaohongshu. One of those clients was targeting Chinese travelers over 40 who still use Weibo heavily. We caught this after their inquiry rate dropped for that demographic segment and reversed the recommendation within the quarter.

What We Do Now

1. Platform allocation by destination type, not by trend. Nature destinations: 45% Douyin, 35% Xiaohongshu, 20% Bilibili. Urban cultural destinations: 35% Xiaohongshu, 30% Bilibili, 25% Douyin, 10% Weibo. We set the allocation based on audience fit, not on which platform is currently most talked about.
2. Experience framing for all content, including luxury. Luxury properties and experiences are not avoided. They are framed around the experience, not the price or the status signal. “What it is like to sleep here” rather than “This five-star suite costs X.”
3. Chinese cultural calendar planning built into every annual content plan. We map 8-10 Chinese cultural calendar moments per year where destination content can authentically connect to Chinese platform traffic spikes. This is now a standard deliverable in every campaign brief.
4. Bilibili for any destination with a genuine cultural depth story. Not every destination should be on Bilibili. But if your destination has a real heritage, craft, history, or cultural complexity story that rewards 15+ minutes of content, Bilibili is underserved and highly effective. We assess this for every new client.
5. Douyin series content instead of one-off videos. The algorithm rewards accounts with consistent series content that drives return viewership. Every Douyin program we run now has at least one ongoing series format built in, not just individual posts.

Solutions: How Tourism Brands Can Win on China’s Entertainment Platforms

Xiaohongshu (RedNote) Strategy

1. Build content around cultural depth, not luxury signaling. The most important content shift on Xiaohongshu post-2022 is moving from “premium lifestyle” framing to “authentic experience” framing. A traveler learning traditional cooking from a local family, visiting an artisan workshop, or exploring an ancient site with a knowledgeable guide consistently outperforms content showing the same traveler in a luxury suite. Both can coexist, but the ratio should shift toward experience. See our Xiaohongshu service page for the full content framework.

2. Create content series around Chinese cultural connections. Destinations with historical connections to China, through the Silk Road, historical trade, shared philosophical traditions, or Chinese diaspora communities, should build Xiaohongshu content series explicitly around these connections. This framing aligns with post-2022 Chinese cultural priorities and differentiates destination content from purely visual tourism promotion.

3. Target Xiaohongshu’s “Outdoor and Nature” content vertical explicitly. This vertical grew 89% in 2025 and receives algorithm-level preference. Destination content tagged appropriately to outdoor, hiking, wildlife, and nature categories benefits from both audience interest and platform promotion.

4. Partner with Xiaohongshu creators who cover cultural and heritage topics, not just travel. Destination marketing partnerships with Chinese creators who specialize in history, traditional culture, food heritage, and craft traditions reach a more engaged audience than partnerships with general travel influencers. This audience saves and shares content with unusual intensity.

5. Use Xiaohongshu collections to build destination itinerary resources. Xiaohongshu’s “collections” feature allows users to save and organize posts. Creating official destination collections, “5 days in [city] for culture lovers,” “the authentic [destination] food guide,” provides planning tools that Chinese travelers actively use and return to.

Douyin Strategy

6. Align content with Douyin’s algorithmically favored categories. Post-2022, Douyin actively promotes content in rural revitalization, traditional culture, outdoor nature, and intangible cultural heritage categories. Destinations with authentic connections to these categories benefit from platform-level promotion that extends organic reach. Our Douyin marketing guide covers the specific content formats that work best in each category.

7. Create content in Chinese cultural calendar format. Chinese cultural events, Qingming, Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, Chinese New Year, generate large content consumption around cultural themes. Destination content that connects authentically to these moments rides significant organic traffic waves.

8. Build Douyin series content rather than one-off videos. The platform’s algorithm rewards accounts with consistent series content that drives return viewership. A destination Douyin account with a consistent “Week in [city]” or “Food of [region]” series builds algorithmic momentum that individual videos cannot.

9. Invest in Douyin LIVE for real-time destination content. Douyin Live has grown as a discovery tool beyond its commerce origins. A destination or hotel doing regular live streams, a chef cooking local food, a guide walking through a famous street, creates real-time engagement that no produced video can replicate and that Douyin’s algorithm actively amplifies. Combined with our WeChat marketing approach, live content converts discovery into direct inquiry efficiently.

Our full services overview covers how we combine platform strategy across Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and WeChat for integrated destination campaigns.

External reading: Reuters on China entertainment regulation and tourism marketing impact and China Tourism Academy 2026 Outbound Travel Report.

Example Found on Chinese Web (Translated)

From a Bilibili video essay by channel 旅行哲学家 (“Travel Philosopher”), titled “Why I stopped watching ‘travel vloggers’ and started watching ‘cultural explorers’,” 340,000 views, 89,000 likes, posted September 2024:

“Something shifted in Chinese travel content after 2022 and I don’t think enough people have named it clearly. The travel vlogger whose content was about hotels, business class flights, and luxury experiences has been replaced, not entirely, but significantly, by creators who are interested in what a place actually means. Creators who show up in Kyoto and want to understand the philosophy of wabi-sabi, not just photograph the temples. Creators who go to Morocco and want to understand Islamic geometric patterns, not just show the blue city. This is not a government-driven shift. It is a genuine cultural shift among the 25-40 demographic that has been promised consumption as the meaning of life and has started to wonder if there is something else. Destinations that speak to this audience, that offer depth, not just beauty, are the destinations that are winning Chinese cultural tourists in 2025.”

Summary Table

Platform	Key Stat 2025	Best Content Format for Tourism
Douyin	800M daily active users	Outdoor/nature, cultural series, LIVE streams
Xiaohongshu	300M MAU, outdoor vertical +89%	Honest reviews, practical notes, UGC amplification
Bilibili	12.4B travel/cultural views in 2025	Long-form documentary, heritage storytelling
Chinese outbound cultural travel growth	+47% in 2025 vs. 2024	Strongest audience for heritage destinations
Chinese cultural calendar campaign ROI	~15% of equivalent paid ad cost for same reach	Calendar-aligned content on Douyin

China’s Entertainment Platforms and Tourism Marketing

Which Chinese entertainment platform is most important for tourism marketing in 2026?
Douyin for reach and discovery (800M+ daily users, unmatched scale). Xiaohongshu for intent and conversion (Chinese travelers actively planning trips, high-save engagement). Bilibili for cultural depth and the educated 18-35 demographic. All three serve distinct functions in the Chinese traveler’s decision process.

How has the 2022 entertainment regulation affected what content tourism brands can produce?
Luxury lifestyle emphasis has become more cautious. Content promoting conspicuous wealth or ostentatious consumption in ways that could attract “common prosperity” criticism should be avoided. Cultural, nature, experience, and heritage-focused content is not only safe but actively favored. For most tourism brands, the practical effect is minimal: most legitimate destination content was never in the restricted categories.

Is Weibo still relevant for tourism marketing?
Weibo remains relevant for real-time news, celebrity partnership amplification, and reaching older Chinese demographics (35+). Its importance relative to Douyin and Xiaohongshu has declined for tourism discovery and planning. It is a secondary platform for most destination marketing programs, not a primary one. Do not abandon it entirely if your target traveler is over 35.

What budget allocation across platforms makes sense for a destination with limited Chinese marketing budget?
For most destinations: 40% Xiaohongshu (highest intent, best conversion), 40% Douyin (highest reach), 20% Bilibili (cultural depth, educated audience). Adjust based on destination type: nature/adventure destinations should put more toward Douyin; cultural/historical destinations should put more toward Bilibili.

Work With Us

If your destination wants to build a platform strategy that reflects how China’s entertainment channels actually work in 2026, not 2019, we can help you develop content programs for Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and Bilibili that reach the right audiences with the right messages.

Contact us to discuss your Chinese platform marketing strategy.

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About the author: Alex is a project manager at Chinese Tourist Agency, based in Shanghai for over 10 years. She manages multi-platform campaigns for destinations across Europe, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific. She has personally watched Bilibili travel documentaries for research purposes and will not confirm how many hours that involved.