In rural areas, the seriously unbalanced gender ratio makes it more difficult for men to find a partner. Some people are reluctant to introduce a partner because the success rate is too low.

Since the 1980s, there has been a high proportion of boys in children born every year in China. As they gradually enter marriage and childbearing age, there has indeed been a phenomenon that men encounter fierce competition in the marriage market and even can’t find a spouse.

However, the distribution of this phenomenon is uneven. This phenomenon is not obvious in large cities due to the supplementary effect of the incoming population, but it will be more prominent in some rural areas, remote areas, and areas with a low level of economic development.

There are differences in the gender ratio of the marriageable population between urban and rural areas.

The gender ratio of the marriageable population in big cities tends to be feminine, resulting in the phenomenon of “older leftover women”; the gender ratio of the marriageable population in the vast rural areas, especially in remote areas, tends to be masculine, resulting in the problem of “grass-roots singles”.

Gender composition should be divided into age groups. From the main marriage and childbearing age group of 20 to 40, there are more than 17 million men than women, not more than 30 million, according to NBS.

Guangdong is the province with the highest proportion of men, accounting for 53.07% of the male population and 46.93% of the female population, with a gender ratio of 113.08. Followed by Hainan, the proportion of the male population is 53.02%, the female population is 46.98%, and the gender ratio is 112.86.

The three northeastern provinces are the most balanced. Among them, Jilin and Liaoning are the only provinces in China where the female population exceeds the male population.

7 Major Consumer Segments Shaping Chinese Market Landscape

These coupons are for all people in Wuhan. WeChat real-name verified users can enter the corresponding mini program to collect the coupon.

At the same time, there are 1.8 billion yuan (US$254.63 million) worth of business coupons issued by online platforms. The first phase started at 12:00 p.m. on April 19 and will last for six weeks until May 31 2020. And, the second phase will start on 1 June 2020.

One coupon can be collected at a time, with a face value of 10 yuan, 20 yuan, 50 yuan, and 80 yuan. The first phase will have 30 million yuan coupons, redeemable from 20th April onwards.

The Wuhan consumption voucher received by consumers through the WeChat mini program is applicable to the merchants who use WeChat merchant payment settlement. However, merchants who use the personal WeChat payment code, will not accept those vouchers.

According to Hangzhou Municipal Bureau of Commerce, the city’s fifth round of e-consumption coupons was issued at 8pm of 20 April, with a total of 1.5 million digital card packages. Each has a total value of 50 yuan, including 5 general consumption coupons with a value of 10 yuan each and 10 yuan further subsidy for every 40 yuan consumption.

As of 24:00 on April 16, 321 million yuan (US$45.41 mn) of Hangzhou government subsidies had been claimed in the first four rounds of coupon campaigns driving a total consumption of 3.422 billion yuan (US$484.05 bn).

As of 20 April 2020, cities in Guangdong province have issued 1 billion yuan worth of e-coupons.

Update (5 Jun): Since the worst of the Covid-19 outbreak in China, the country has issued over RMB5.6 billion ($788 million) in such incentives.

China GDP declined by 6.8% in Q1 2020

The number of ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWI) in China reached 1.34 million, an additional 130,000 compared to 2015 as of May 2016 according to Hurun Research.

The number of UHNWIs in China whose total assets worth exceed RMB 100 million reached 89,000, with an growth rate of 14.1%.

Guangdong province replaced Beijing as the top region with the most number of UHNWIs (240,000) with a growth rate of 17.65%. Beijing ranks second with 238,000 UHNWIs, followed by Shanghai (205,000) and Zhejiang province (160,000). The combined UHNWIs of this four regions reached 843,000, accounting for 63% of total.

China’s UHNWIs are mainly comprised of four groups: business owners (55%), gold collar (20%), real estate investors (15%), and professional stock traders (10%).

Continue to read China’s HNWIs outbound travel trends »

Alipay is the largest third-payment online payment platform in China. And, Alipay is not satisfied to be only an online payment solution and made great attempts expanding offline in 2015.

Nanjing Alipay Street

Alipay set up the first “Alipay Street” in Nanjing with all restaurants in that street accepting electronic payment through Alipay. Simply by scanning the code could customers finish payments which improves the payment efficiency and avoids the circulation of counterfeit money.

WenZhou Alipay Food Fair

After entering supermarkets, convenience stores, hospitals and taxi-calling industries, Alipay began to enter the food fair markets in 2015. Wenzhou, a city in Zhejiang province, had the first “Alipay Smart Food Fair” in September 2015 where the smart weighing scales could generate the QR code for customer payments.

Beijing Alipay Transportation Card Service

Alipay launched the self-serving machine that citizens could withdraw cash from their transportation cards to their Alipay accounts. Citizens just needs to insert the card in the machine and then scan the QR code. Citizens could also buy cards and top up balance on these machines. About one hundred these machines have been put into use in Beijing and Shanghai.

Shanghai Alipay Breakfast Car

Alipay launched “Alipay Breakfast Car” in Shanghai with QR codes. Customers could pay on Alipay when buying breakfast in the hush morning eliminating the need for getting the change. Shanghai currently has 600 breakfast cars and another 1,000 will be available later.

Lijiang Alipay City Service

Lijiang, a city in Yunnan province, was a famous travel destination city in China. Alipay cooperated with Lijiang government that the city would be fully connected with Alipay payment. At present, Lijiang traffic violations, tourist attractions and other functions could be enquired on Alipay and in the future travelers will be able to use Alipay to buy attractions tickets, tour guide, map guide, and book transportation tickets.

Hong Kong Alipay Offline Shops

Hong Kong had more than 5,000 retails stores covering all fields from beauty make-up, electronics, gold, and jewelry to clothing, department stores, food and so on supporting payment by ALipay. On the basis of payment in the scan code, Alipay promised to support exclusive discounts for customers for the arrival of the new year.

Guangdong Alipay City Service Province

21 cities of Guangdong province had fully connected Alipay urban services in 2015. Citizens could enquire vehicle violation query, buy attractions tickets, renew Hong Kong and Macao Entry Permits, and etc.

Beijing Alipay Parking Lot

Alipay has announced a strategic partnership with smart parking platform ETCP and 500 parking lots in Beijing with nearly 100,000 parking spaces connected with Alipay. After following the “ETCP stop” service to bind their license plates on Alipay, car owners could park cars easily. ETCP license plate recognition technology would automatically photograph and calculate the license plate parking time, and get deductions from Alipay.

This service would also be available in Shanghai, Chengdu, Chongqing, Wuhan, Foshan, Dongguan, Huizhou, Xi’an, Nanjing, and Shenzhen.

Also read:China Offline Mobile Payment Insights in 2015

Top 10 provinces with the highest average online shopping spends on Taobao are Shanghai, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Fujian, Guangdong, Xinjiang, Sichuan, Tianjin, Beijing and Liaoning according to Taobao based on data from October 2014 to September 2015. Provinces with the lowest average spends are Gansu, Qinghai and Tibet.

Regional economic level influenced the development level of the online shopping market. The top five provinces with the highest online consumption located in the southeast coastal provinces where citizens got a higher income level than the average.

E-commerce in Shanghai, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Fujian and Guangdong has entered an advanced stage. These five regions received and delivered most online order packages in China.

Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai in total account for 15% national delivery packages on Double 11 shopping festival in 2015. Packages the three provinces received on Double 11 accounted for 25% of total and packages sent from these provinces accounted for half of total. High population concentration, a large volume of e-business companies (such as Alibaba in Hangzhou, Zhejiang) and low delivery fees led to busy logistic transportation here.

Well-developed transport and logistics system further stimulated online shopping. The purchasing power is relatively strong in Shanghai, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Fujian and Guangdong provinces. Many were new demands stimulated by online shopping market.

Xinjiang and Sichuan ranked sixth and seventh respectively surpassing Beijing, Tianjin, Shandong and other provinces which mainly resulted from various good categories and low costs in online shopping. Traditional commerce in Xinjiang wasn’t as developed as other regions in China; thus online shopping became an essential channel to buy products unavailable or expensive locally.

Taobao data also showed that Shanghai, Guangdong, Beijing, Tianjin, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang ranked top for being the most diversified online shopping consumption regions. Regions with advanced economic level tends to be more diversified in online consumption. Tianjin, Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu also ranked in the top.

Also read: China Retail V.S. Online Shopping 2015

An article called Why I Left Tencent to Sell Chaoshan Specialities received over 100,000 views within 6 hours since published on WeChat.

Xu Ruifeng, sitting in front of reporters, talked about the WeChat marketing and calmly said, “We expect more than 10 thousand (views)”. As a former marketing & PR senior manager at Tencent Group, Xu Ruifeng undoubtedly makes a quite successful PR for his own pioneering work. As he says, the current cumulative amount of reading is over 400 thousand.

The soaring amount of article views directly drove the in-store visits. Within two weeks after its opening, the customers cram into the store and occupy the only six tables and the number of the customers doubled at the weekend. Last weekend, the store issued 50 numbers for seats waiting.

Also read: Why Wechat Marketing Metrics Could All Be Lies

Alibaba Ali Institute and Chinese Academy of Information Technology jointly started “E-Commerce Development Index” research in 2010. This year, Ali Institute studies 294 cities and released “China’s Top 100 Best E-Commerce Cities 2013” report.

1. Shenzhen
2. Guangzhou
3. Hangzhou
4. Beijing
5. Shanghai
6. Jinhua
7. Zhuhai
8. Xiamen
9. Suzhou
10. Nanjing

Among the top 100 e-commerce cities, 11 are from Zhejiang and Jiangsu province respectively, followed by Guangdong (10 cities) and Fujian province (9 cities).

796 million products are published on Taobao by over 8 million sellers by end 2013.

E-commerce is huge in China and online shopping has even become part of some China internet users’ life. According to data from Taobao, there were 5,758 Taobao users who spent over one million shopping on Taobao in 2013, 1,053 of which are from Guangdong province.

2013 was gone in a flash. Social share still enjoyed a strong momentum in the past year. JiaThis, the biggest social share tool in China, released its data-based Report of China Social Share Tools in 2013. Overall social sharing times reached 1.4 billion in 2013.

While login to social media accounts such as QQ and Sina Weibo, users also shared content on different platforms. One-click share accounted for 5.6% in all sharing methods.

According to sharing period statistics, the peak period in a day was from 13 to 16, accounted for about 24.8%.

Video websites drove most social visits by social sharing, accounted for 27.39%.

Hot sharing words included Haze, Tuhao and Bit coin in 2013.

The number of male users was significantly higher than female users, almost twice the number.

Top 5 regions of sharing were: Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shandong, Beijing. Guangdong remained on the first place, with a proportion of 16.28%.

Hurun Research Institute last week released the GroupM Knowledge-Hurun Wealth Report 2013 that analyses China’s wealthy people broken down according to their regional distribution across China, as well as their investment, consumption preferences, and how they use the media.

This report will help marketers to better understand the lifestyle of China’s wealthy population and to communicate and engage with them more effectively.

The number of millionaires grew (defined as individuals with personal wealth of CNY 10 million, equivalent to US$1.6 million and GBP 1 million) by 3% in 2012 to 1.05 million, while the number of the super-rich (defined as individuals with personal wealth of CNY 100 million, equivalent to US$16 million and GBP 10 million) reached 64,500, up 2% from the previous year. The growth, the slowest one in five years, has decelerated for the second consecutive year.

As of the end of 2012, in all the 31 autonomous regions, cities and provinces excluding Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, the number of millionaires has increased by 30,000 from last year to 1.05 million, while the number of the super-rich has increased by 1,000 to 64,500 – an increase of 3% and 2% respectively. The growth, the slowest one in five years, has decelerated for the second consecutive year. At present, one out of every 1,300 people in China is a millionaire, and one out of every 20,000 people in China belongs to the super-rich class.

Beijing remains in the first place, followed by Guangdong and Shanghai. Tianjin saw the fastest growth rate in the country, while Zhejiang Province and Inner Mongolia dropped the most.

Beijing remains in the first place with an increase of 5,000 to 184,000 millionaires, and with an increase of 200 to 10,700 super rich. Guangdong ranks the second with 172,000 millionaires and 9,600 super rich. It is followed by Shanghai with 147,000 millionaires and 8,500 super rich. Tianjin rose to the tenth place, with 19,000 millionaires, up 11% from the previous year, as well as 1,400 super rich, up 12% from the previous year – the fastest increase in all the cities. Other fast-growing provinces include Shandong, Henan, Yunan, Guizhou, Qinghai and Tibet. About 60% of China’s wealthy population are located in the second and third tier cities such as Hangzhou, Ningbo and Foshan where the number of millionaires exceed 20,000. The research indicates that, although the number of China’s millionaires is growing generally, the number of some areas decreased slightly among which Zhejiang Province and Inner Mongolia dropped the most.

A quarter of millionaires say they are very confident about China’s economy in the coming two years, a decline of 3% from the previous year. The confidence level of the year before was 54%. 66% of the millionaires say they are fairly confident – a 2 percentage point increases from a year earlier, while 9% of millionaires say they are not confident – a 2 percentage point increase from a year earlier and this is the highest one in last three years.

The Hurun Millionaires’ Happiness Index has reached 7.8 out of 10. What millionaires want most of all is to have good health. A quarter are dissatisfied with their state of health.

73% of millionaires think they are happier than the previous generation; the happiness they get from their family is greater than that from their jobs; female millionaires’ happiness index has reached 8, slightly higher than that for men; the under 30s’ sense of happiness is notably lower than that of older people, particularly where their work is concerned.

Other interesting findings include:

• There are currently 8,100 Renminbi billionaires and 280 individuals with personal assets of 10 billion RMB in China.
• China’s millionaires fall into four categories: private business owners, stock market gurus, property speculators and high-salaried executives, in which the number of stock market guru dropped by 5% from the previous year, and the number of high-salaried executives grew by 5% from the previous year. The Chinese super-rich fall into three categories: private business owners, stock market gurus, and property speculators.
• Real estate remains the first choice when it comes to personal investment in spite of the macro-adjustment measures, accounting for 64% of all investments. However, a certain proportion of Chinese millionaires also start seeking new investment opportunities.
• The wealthy population spent 3% of their average wealth of 59 million RMB last year. A great 3% of their spending went to travel. Wealthy people are also more and more interested in seeking out unique travel experiences, and exotic destinations such as Africa or the polar areas are gaining popularity
• On average, millionaires and the super-rich are away on business trips for fewer days a month than last year, a slight reduction of half a day and 3 days respectively. On average, millionaires leave China 2.8 times a year, down from 3 times last year and the super-rich leave China 3.4 times a year, down from 4.2 times last year.
• Following the craze for studying abroad, there is now also an increasingly clear tendency to purchase overseas property. The U.S. is the top destination for overseas property purchase.
• About 80% of wealthy people now use WeChat than using microblogs (70%), most of whom use it primarily for interacting with their friends.

Shanghai-based Stenvall Skoeld & Company calculated the iOS penetration rate (Apple’s iPhone and iPad, not including iPod touch) in all Chinese provinces and municipalities; and, their estimate puts the total number of iPhones and iPads in China at end of 2011 at 21 million active devices, distributed as shown above.

More than half of all iOS devices are found in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong and the Yangtze Delta Region. In Beijing and Shanghai there is one iOS device for every nine and eleven people, in the rest of China penetration is still very low.