1. How to travel to China in 2022

Can you travel to China right now? The short answer is yes, but there are processes in place that you need to follow. Tom Simpson, CBBC’s Managing Director of China Operations and China Chief Representative, recounted his journey to China from the UK in August 2022 and shared important tips for those looking to do the same.

Note that as China’s zero covid apparatus starts to wind down at the end of 2022, the requirements for quarantine, testing and health codes are likely to change rapidly, so be sure to check before making travel plans.

2. How does Xiaohongshu work and why is it so popular?

Often compared to Instagram or Pinterest, Xiaohongshu (or RED in English) helps users discover and buy luxury, fashion and beauty products. What is notable about Xiaohongshu is that it has created an environment that allows consumer hype to drive exposure rather than the brands themselves setting the narrative. Fans come to the platform to hear the real story on foreign fashion brands or to get the inside scoop on beauty tips and tricks with the products they use every day from people they can relate to. With the cost of media in China ever-rising, using Xiaohongshu as a sandbox to find your brand’s community in China is a savvy way to test the market in 2022 and beyond.

3. The best 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics advertising campaigns

The Winter Olympics naturally generated plenty of column inches at the start of the year, but Focus was interested in how businesses interacted with the event. For example, major brands like Coca Cola and P&G created advertising campaigns that incorporated local Chinese elements — a trend that is likely here to stay in 2023 — while others turned to brand endorsements from the biggest star of the Winter Olympics, Eileen Gu. What’s more, simmering international tensions meant that brands had to think carefully about the tone and content of their advertising, something that will continue to be a key consideration when interacting with the Chinese market. 

4. China’s real estate crisis explained

China’s real estate sector used to be a key driver of the economy, but the tide turned in 2021-2022 and now it’s starting to drag. Failure to regulate the sector in boom has left the country with limited options in bust, and as a result, in 2022, UK companies were beginning to be impacted because Chinese partners were defaulting on their payments due to cash flow issues.

In November 2022, the Chinese authorities unveiled measures to rescue the struggling real estate sector, including credit support for indebted developers; however, in the long-run, ambitious structural reforms concerning how the developers work with local government, state-owned banks, and their customers will be required.

5. Are Gen Z Chinese consumers getting tired of the guochao trend?

The term guochao (国朝), meaning ‘national trend,’ refers to a trend in which young Chinese consumers are increasingly interested in the integration of traditional Chinese culture and style with domestic brands and products. Since 2018, brands like L’Oréal, KFC and Oreo have attempted to tap into this trend by showcasing designs and collaborations inspired by Chinese culture. However, a slew of unpopular collaborations and product launches show that to successfully navigate the guochao trend going forward, brands need to showcase a deeper understanding of Chinese culture and the preferences of their target audience, rather than simply sticking Chinese design elements on product packaging.

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The 2022 Paralympic Winter Games (4-13 March) mark an important moment for disabled citizens and athletes from all around the world. Despite the escalation of geopolitical tensions in many countries since the start of the Winter Olympics in February, the spirit of the Paralympic games has not faded.

The Paralympic Games are a big moment for China and Britain as both nations showcase their biggest teams to date; China had a record 96 athletes and Britain fielded a team of 25, its biggest since the Games in Lillehammer in 1994. China has had an incredible showing, ranking top of the table both in terms of gold medals and overall number of medals.

The prospect of the Games has encouraged many more children and adults with disabilities to try skiing, curling and other sports. It is reported that China has made remarkable progress in the development of winter sports facilities for people with disabilities, and since 2016 the number of Chinese nationals taking part in Paralympic sports has grown from less than 50 to 1,000.

The Paralympic Games is an important reminder about the continuing need for inclusivity of disabled citizens in China. According to a white paper published by the State Council in 2019, there were more than 85 million disabled people in China. Nevertheless, many still face barriers to inclusion in their daily life and exclusionary hiring practices, despite anti-discrimination laws that levy fines against companies who do not fairly consider employing disabled people. 

China is making the most of new technologies at this year’s Games and has introduced a smart accessibility service platform that allows athletes staying in the Olympic Village to navigate an accessible route to events via their mobile phones. 

One of the most important aspects of the Games is that it aims to provide a voice for people with disabilities. A global human rights campaign called #WeThe15 was launched at Tokyo 2020 by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) and the International Disability Alliance (IDA). The campaign aims to remove the wide variety of barriers faced by disabled people so everyone can fulfil their potential and be active, visible members of an inclusive society. 

Over the years there have been some improvements in the social and commercial visibility of disabled people in China. For example, in 2021, Tmall launched a campaign called the One-Shoe scheme to offer amputees a single shoe. The campaign, which featured disabled professional athletes, proved to be a huge success, attracted over 120 million engagements on Weibo and attempted to emphasise equality and remove stigma. Nevertheless, as the campaign’s creative director Jin Sihan told Dao Insights, it also drew attention to the need for careful messaging around cause-related campaigns, so that brands don’t seem to be taking the moral high ground or patronising either disabled people or the general public.

This year’s Winter Paralympics also marked a “global first” for an international sporting event, as UK broadcaster Channel 4’s coverage of the event will be led by a team comprised entirely of presenters and pundits with disabilities. 

While there is still a way to go in terms of the rights of disabled people in China, the Winter Paralympics have drawn attention to a section of society that often goes undiscussed, validating the athletes who have truly earned their moment in the spotlight through their athletic prowess and perseverance.

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With so many questions and potential controversies swirling around the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics — from geopolitical tensions to whether China could maintain its ‘dynamic zero’ Covid-19 policy with so many athletes coming in from abroad — it was hard to predict beforehand which stories would capture headlines.

Looking back over the biggest stories now that the Games are over, beyond some incredible feats of sporting prowess, a number of personal and cultural stories also grabbed the world’s attention. People went crazy for Olympic mascot Bing Dwen Dwen, a giant panda wearing a suit of ice, causing two to three-hour-long queues to form outside stores selling Olympic merchandise in central Beijing – surprising given that it attracted little fanfare when it initially launched in 2018. Team GB became the unlikely stars of the opening ceremony when Weibo and WeChat users responded positively to their Ben Sherman-designed outfits.

However, one name has stood out above all others: Eileen Gu.

The 18-year-old is the success story of China’s “naturalisation project.” A pet project of President Xi Jinping, the plan to recruit foreign athletes of Chinese heritage to represent the country in certain events was launched after Beijing won its bid to host the winter games to address the fact that it had only won a small number of medals at previous Winter Olympics — 13 as of 2018, to be exact.

Gu is one such athlete, and she has more than met China’s expectations, winning two gold medals in the freestyle skiing big air and halfpipe events, and a silver for slopestyle. This not only makes her the youngest ever freestyle skiing Olympic gold medalist, but also the first freestyle skier to win three medals at the same event. Clearly, she is a force to be reckoned with, and both commercial brands and other organisations are taking note.

In 2019, Eileen announced on social media that she had made the choice to represent China in the 2022 Winter Olympics. With this decision came a stream of nationalistic praise from Chinese citizens and sponsorships from state-owned firms including Bank of China and China Mobile. As Ricardo Fort, who managed Olympic sponsorships for Coca-Cola and Visa during past Games has said, “If I had to choose between Chinese sponsors and American sponsors, the pool of money for endorsements in China is more interesting for any athlete.”

Gu’s decision to compete for China was met with less enthusiasm in the West. Many Americans criticised the young athlete for choosing to represent a nation with an increasingly hardline government, especially since she had been trained and raised in the US. Eileen’s silence on many topics concerning China also came as a surprise to her fans in the US, who know her as an outspoken advocate for human rights. At the age of 12, Gu gave a speech to her all-girls school about female empowerment and spoke about the difficulties she faced competing in a male-dominated sport. Yet when asked about whether she shared the concerns of the international sporting community regarding the well being of Peng Shuai, a Chinese tennis player who accused a former Chinese official of sexual harassment in November 2021, Gu simply said she was “really happy” that Peng had been at the Olympic freestyle big air event to watch her win her gold, and honoured that a star from a major sport like tennis had come to see “niche sports like freeskiing.” 

China’s recruitment of Eileen Gu also has political implications. As Martin Wiesiolek, a cross-country skiing coach, wrote online rather bluntly in 2019, “[Eileen Gu] will end up serving as a political tool…” While such a statement may be perceived as dramatic, it certainly carries an element of truth. Choosing a mixed-heritage athlete to be the face of the sport in a country with a strong culture of conservative nationalism does seem deliberate on Beijing’s part. After all, Gu’s decision to choose her Chinese heritage over her American upbringing is a grand demonstration of China’s soft power.

Gu has become a token of China’s growing strength. Her decision to represent the country of her mother’s birth will certainly have huge financial implications for her personally; she is reported to have made RMB 200 million (£23 million) in endorsement deals in China in 2021, even before her successful Winter Olympics run. It will also have an impact on the geopolitical tensions that are increasing between China and the US — especially now that Beijing can boast that a prominent US national has elected to come in from the cold. In China, Gu’s decision and medal-winning success at the Games helps Beijing foster an image of a US in decline. But despite all of this, Gu claims to be disinterested with the political implications her dichotomous identity carries, telling a recent press conference “I’m not trying to make anyone happy”. 

Image captured from Instagram @eileen_gu_

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China’s athleisure market is booming. As more and more Chinese people make fitness part of their daily schedule, China’s sportswear market has become the second-largest in the world behind the US. In 2019, the retail value of the Chinese sportswear market reached an estimated RMB 316.6 billion (£36.8 billion). Foreign athletic wear has long been favoured by Chinese consumers, with brands such as Nike and Adidas maintaining a leading position in the market over domestic Chinese brands primarily due to their high quality.

However, in recent years the direction of the sportswear market has shifted, and Chinese sports brands such Anta and Li Ning are rapidly closing in on foreign companies. Whilst these brands are virtually unheard of outside of China, they are becoming ubiquitous in their home country. 

Anta (established in 1991) is currently ranked third in terms of market share behind Nike and Adidas. In the first half of 2021 alone, Anta Group generated revenues of RMB 22.8 billion (£2.6 billion), markedly exceeding the revenue levels of Adidas by RMB 4.5 billion (£500 million) and doubling that of Li-Ning’s. Furthermore, Anta topped online sales on Tmall with Nike and Adidas coming in second and third, respectively. Industry experts predict that if Anta continues at its current growth rate it will soon overtake Adidas in market value and marginally trail behind Nike.  

Nevertheless, there is still room for growth for foreign sportswear brands, but they need to understand the reasons behind Anta’s rapid rise if they want to succeed in the market.

What factors are driving Anta’s growth? 

In March 2021, Nike and Adidas suffered from consumer boycotts in response to their widely stated policy of not using cotton grown in Xinjiang. On top of these political challenges, both companies have also been struggling to win over young Chinese consumers who are generally more in favour of homegrown brands. As part of a trend dubbed guochao (literally ‘national trend’ or ‘Chinese fashion trend’), many young consumers are displaying a stronger preference for Chinese brands.

Anta has benefited hugely from control of its factories and stores. Unlike Western rivals who have to negotiate with third-party factories and retailers to prioritise the production and display of their products, Anta has in-house factories and stores. Therefore, it is able to produce and market a new shoe line, for example, in around six to nine months which is approximately half the timeframe of brands such as Nike.

In recent years, Anta has also bolstered research and development funding to improve the quality of its products. Its aim is to raise the public perception of Chinese products and help reduce China’s reliance on foreign brands. By investing in technology and outfitting elite athletes at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, the hope is to gain an advantage over overseas brands by selling products that are both high quality and low in price.

Anta has benefitted from having wildly popular skier Eileen Gu as a brand ambassador

Anta’s marketing efforts have also helped it gain greater recognition in a highly competitive market. Not only has the company landed landmark sponsorships with American NBA players like Klay Thompson and wildly popular Chinese-American freestyle skier Eileen Gu, it was also chosen to supply the uniforms for Chinese athletes and staff members for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. President Xi Jinping even wore a dark blue Arc’teryx parka to the opening ceremony. While Anta has served as an unofficial sponsor for past Olympics, for this year’s games it has become the official supplier and sponsor, as well as the licensed supplier of uniforms for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and its staff members. These partnerships have been a great success; Anta’s shares are up 67% since it signed Gu as its brand ambassador in January 2020.  

An appetite for expansion

One of Anta’s main ambitions is to become a global household name through a multi-brand, multi-channel strategy. It started this journey in 2009 when it acquired the trademark of the Fila brand in China. Anta operates the Fila business and Fila stores in China, as well as the stores of Asian brands like Descente and Kolon Sport.

In 2019, Anta bought out Finnish sporting goods company Amer. Amer operates several world-famous brands, including sports equipment brands Salomon and Wilson, and winter sportswear brand Arc’teryx. 

Nevertheless, Anta remains relatively unknown outside of China, and if it wants to expand, it will face challenges in the form of more complicated legal frameworks and the possibility of trade disputes, which together might make it difficult for Anta to quickly achieve global recognition. 

Anta provided the kit for Chinese athletes at Tokyo 2020

The future of Chinese sports brands

While it may be struggling with brand recognition outside of China, the rapid rise in Anta’s share prices reflects the company’s increasing competitiveness.  The Winter Olympics has given Anta an enviable boost in both visibility and stock value, with the value of Anta Sports Products Ltd. (listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange) rising as much as 5.2% ahead of the opening ceremony on February 4. Together with increased government support and the strong desire of Chinese consumers to “buy local,” there is therefore considerable potential for Anta to expand its customer base in China and around the world. 

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With the amount of media attention directed at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, it has been hard to predict what the top news headlines would be in advance. However, perhaps no one expected Team GB’s outfits to be the breakout star of the opening ceremony. 

For their National Stadium look, Team GB wore duffle coats and roll-neck jumpers emblazoned with the Union Jack designed by British brand Ben Sherman, paired with leather Chelsea boots. The woollen coat in particular stood out among the down jackets worn by most of the other teams, with many posts on WeChat Moments appreciating the ‘gentlemanly’ style (a concept long associated with Britain in China). 

Thousands of internet users in China apparently appreciated the getup’s quintessential ‘Britishness,’ and according to The Guardian, reaction to the outfits briefly reached number eight on the Weibo Hot Topic ranking. “It was exciting to see British fashion make a dramatic splash at the Olympics, and indeed many of us have been hunting for our own Team GB Ben Sherman sweater ever since the opening ceremony,” says Sohail Shaikh, Director of Consumer, Learning, Food and Agritech at the Department of International Trade. 

A post from the British embassy on Weibo sharing a video of the Ben Sherman ad campaign for Beijing 2022 attracted hundreds of comments lamenting that the jumpers were sold out on the brand’s official websites in the US and UK. In what in hindsight appears to be a huge missed opportunity, Ben Sherman –which got its start selling mod-style short-sleeved shirts in the 1960s – does not currently have an official store on Tmall or JD.com.

The Guardian noted that one Weibo user likened the Team GB outfits to the Hogwarts uniform. Harry Potter, as one of the UK’s most significant modern cultural exports, has also become somewhat representative of British style in China, especially since Universal Beijing Resort and its Harry Potter-themed land opened in September 2021. 

Chinese millennials — who grew up reading the books in both Chinese and English — have flocked to the park to explore the Hogsmeade Village recreation and, more importantly, take pictures wearing Hogwarts-inspired costumes to post on WeChat and Xiaohongshu. The surge in popularity for Harry Potter and associated looks has not been lost on international chain retailers, either, with H&M selling public school uniform-style jumpers as part of its autumn/winter collection. 

Setting trends is nothing new for the UK. British universities and design houses provide a crucible for design talent from around the world

A quintessential sense of ‘Britishness’ has long been a fundamental part of the appeal of the British fashion brands that have succeeded in China, including Paul Smith and Burberry. These brands are considered to be synonymous with heritage and craftsmanship, particularly if they have an association with the Royal family like Burberry. Burberry, in particular, is popularly worn as part of the 英伦风 yinglunfeng (aka ‘British style’) aesthetic, which features a lot of plaid, tweed and muted colours (similar to the ‘dark academia’ and ‘light academia’ trends that have become popular on TikTok in recent years). High street and mid-range British fashion brands, on the other hand, have often failed to make a splash in China, facing intense competition from massive international chains like H&M and Zara.

“Setting trends is nothing new for the UK. We host one of the world’s four biggest fashion weeks, are home to a legion of high-end and fashion-forward clothing brands, and our universities and design houses provide a crucible for design talent from around the world,” adds Shaikh. Whether Team GB’s opening ceremony look will kickstart a new wave of interest in British style in China remains to be seen.

Image taken from @TeamGB/@evemuirhead on Twitter

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Come February 2022, it’ll be all eyes on China’s faux-snow capped mountains as Beijing hosts the Winter Olympics, making history as the first city to have held both the summer and winter Games. Building on the momentum of Beijing 2022, officials seem set on turning China into a winter sports hub, with plans to build a RMB 1 trillion (£114 billion) industry by 2025, state news outlet China Daily reports.

With three years to go, preparations to get China’s Olympic infrastructure and fledgling ice and snow sports scene ready are well underway. The Games will be held across three key zones: downtown Beijing is set to house the opening and closing ceremonies and ice venues; while to the northwest, Yangqing District and partner city Zhangjiakou will host the snow sports.

Beijing 2022, expected to be the “most intelligent” Games to date according to Juan Antonio Samaranch, the Chair of the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) Coordination Commission, is being built with the future in mind. The majority of new Olympic venues are earmarked for public use and competitions after the Games. Yet, in a country where winter sports have, until recent years, been something of an afterthought – China’s largest Gold medal haul for the Winter Games was five in Vancouver 2010, compared to 48 in the Beijing 2008 Summer Games – is there enough interest to build a sustainable industry?

In 2015, the government set out its vision of getting 300 million Chinese citizens participating in winter sports by 2025

Managing Director of Nielsen Sports Africa, Middle East & Asia Pacific, Kelvin Watt, notes that “Winter sports consumption is expanding in the Chinese market in terms of both an interest as well as a recreational participation perspective. However, compared to sports like football and basketball, winter sports are still relatively small in China, although we expect the Beijing 2022 Olympics to have a major impact in this regard.”

Indeed, the wheels are already in motion. After winning the bid in 2015, the government set out its vision of getting 300 million Chinese citizens participating in winter sports by 2025. China Daily cites goals to grow the sector into a RMB 600 billion (£68 billion) industry by 2020, build 800 ski resorts and 650 ice skating rinks across the country by 2022, and have winter sports contribute 20 percent to China’s sports industry’s gross output by 2025.

China-Britain Business Council’s (CBBC) Senior Director Tom Simpson explains that since winning the bid in 2015, “the Beijing and Central Government is doing more to encourage awareness of winter sports through broadcasting live ice hockey, and other snow/ice sports on television, as well as encouraging the establishment of teams, such as Kunlun Red Star who now participate in Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League.”

Furthermore, Simpson notes, “The growth of participation in winter sports, in particular through the construction of multiple ski resorts around the Winter Olympic site at Chongli [in Zhangjiakou], is one of the most noticeable changes… The hope is that the numbers of people taking to the slopes each year will continue to grow and establish a whole new segment of the consumer sports economy.” According to the Financial Times, Beijing is investing RMB 76 billion (£8.7 billion) into redevelopments at Chongli alone.

Noting the “huge potential” of the winter sports market, CBBC’s China Business Advisor Avi Nagel highlights training and education as two areas where British firms excel and could benefit in light of the push. The demand for instructors has drawn international snowsport organisations to Chinese pistes, including the British Association of Snowsport Instructors (BASI).

Since 2015, BASI has been holding courses across China in collaboration with a local partner. BASI’s CEO Andrew Lockerbie says he finds China’s development in a short space of time “phenomenal”. “When [BASI first arrived in China] there was a handful of ski resorts; now there are over 400 ski areas. The standard of the Chinese recreational skiers and snowboarders has increased exponentially [and] we’ve seen a phenomenal rate of development, both in infrastructure and performance,” Lockerbie explains. “Currently [in China] we’re doing around 25 course places per annum, next year that’ll be expanding to around 40… [globally] we run

350 course places per annum, so over 10 percent of our courses are now in China.”

Touching on common concerns related to the industry’s sustainability after 2022, Lockerbie adds that he thinks the huge increase in the volume of people heading to the slopes is promising. However, he also notes, “China is going to find its recreational market demanding more from their facilities,” resulting in Chinese snow sports enthusiasts spreading quickly throughout the rest of the world leading to high demand for Chinese instructors internationally.

Entering China’s fledgeling snowsports market is of course not without challenges. In an interview with ISPO.com, CEO of ski resort developers MAS, Paul Bojarski cites high costs and low salaries pricing people out, poor mountain choices for resort development, and the market not being ready as reasons he feels the Chinese ski industry won’t benefit as much as the Government hopes from Beijing 2022.

Despite challenges, Nagel explains that in the run up to the Winter Olympics there are, “lots of opportunities for British companies that are involved in the design, construction and operation of winter sports facilities.” A couple of high-profile success stories include architectural design firm Populous, who won the bid to design Beijing’s new National Speed Skating Oval, and engineering and design company Arup who have been involved in a number of projects related to Beijing 2022, including the Zhangjiakou Chongli Taizi City International Snow and Ice Town, the Water Cube, which will play host to the curling, and the Daxing New Airport which, when open, will be the largest airport terminal in the world.

However investors choose to approach China’s nascent winter sporting industry, Nagel emphasises that “to be successful, companies need to go to market to gain better insight into local conditions and meet with potential partners, do their homework to understand the aims and objectives of the Government.”

As momentum starts to snowball in the run up to Beijing 2022, it’s safe to say all players will be firmly focused on China’s RMB 1 trillion target.

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