2020 Douyin Trends Report
How China Moved Online during the Pandemic
Confined to home by the pandemic, Chinese digital users moved their activities online to Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, to document their lives and seek community in a period of isolation and hardship.
Douyin’s recent release of their “2020 Trends Report” is an insightful view into the types of engagement taking place on their platform, especially during the period when the offline world shut down and everyone moved online. The report is in Chinese, so we took it upon ourselves to translate the content into English.
We hope it will shed some light on both consumer behaviors in China and the types of activities occurring in a market where video is so far ahead of the US as a medium of interaction and engagement. This exercise was largely inspired by the work of our friend Katherine Wu, who translated Douyin’s 2019 report. The two reports offer an interesting compare-and-contrast between life in China pre-pandemic and currently.
Takeaways:
People turned to Douyin for a wide spectrum of content, ranging from educating themselves on the status of the pandemic (42.3 billion plays), to supporting local businesses through livestream videos (4.1 billion RMB GMV transacted), to keeping busy during lockdown (800 million likes of videos related to fishing).
Douyin was a good measure of the enthusiastic, active resurgence in tourism during the first major holiday after the pandemic started to wane, signaling the rapid recovery of Chinese tourism and China’s economy. The average daily check-in volume at attractions across the country was 10x more on National Day (Oct 2020) than on the Lunar New Year nine months before (Jan 2020).
The theme of the 2019 Trends report was all about self-expression “每个你都在抖音畅快表达” (translation: all of you expressing yourselves freely on Douyin). Compare it to that of 2020 where it was all about Douyin’s genuine gratitude toward its users “每个你的表达汇聚成了抖音” (translation: your expressions made Douyin what it is today”). Douyin wouldn't have been successful if users hadn't been willing to share their lives and vulnerabilities on the platform. And that success bred further success: new users saw existing users show love through comments (1.8 billion comments on “cheering up” alone), supportive purchases (over 5k craftspeople sell their work on Douyin daily), and emoji reactions, creating a welcoming ecosystem that encouraged others to document and share their lives as well. This feedback loop of engagement became even more important in a time of social isolation. We would argue that Douyin could not have made it happen without the unique pandemic conditions, but they recognized the phenomenon and wisely contributed to its continuing success.
The individual slides from the report, shown below, offer fascinating and sometimes whimsical glimpses into life in China during lockdown. Who would have expected that river snail rice noodles would become a thing? And why are people from Hubei most likely to post videos, while people from Anhui are the most likely to comment on them?
It also offers some glimpses of trends that are likely to continue long after the pandemic disappears in the rear-view mirror: millions of people viewing university classes from major universities, taking fitness classes, and making purchases of everything from food staples to high-end art. It is likely that many of these online behaviors will persist, marking a permanent shift in the way people conduct activities and engage with others. Time will tell, but it’s our view that the “2020 Douyin Trends Report” will act as a time capsule that mirrors back a remarkable year in the life of China, and may also signal a cultural turning point in online behavior.
