China × Global · Weekly Essays
Your insider lens on China — Business · AI · Tech · Marketing.
13 years in marketing, most recently global digital at Transsion / TECNO and NetEase. Jury member, Effie Awards Greater China. Guest lecturer, Peking University School of Economics.
13
Years operating
8
Award jury seats
456
Pages, China playbook
39
Essays published
China Social Intelligence
One email every Monday, about seven minutes, on your brand alone. Not a dashboard you have to log into, and not a keyword count you still have to interpret yourself.
Written by a person whose name is on it, for one brand at a time.
How it worksA monthly ranking of Western brands by Chinese social buzz. L'Oréal leads on total volume, but 97% of it is paid. Strip that out and YSL is the one China actually loves.
Read before you subscribe
A free monthly ranking of how China talks about Western brands, and a 456-page field guide to the industries behind it.
About Annie
Annie spent 13 years inside China’s consumer internet — NetEase, Maimai, Qutoutiao — and then took that to Transsion / TECNO as Global Digital Marketing Director, running paid acquisition, brand, and the team behind them.
She sits on the juries of eight Chinese marketing awards, including Effie Awards Greater China, and was named Marketing Innovator of the Year at the Golden Mouse Awards. She lectures at the Peking University School of Economics and the Renmin University of China School of Business.
In 2021 she went independent, published From Local to Global with China Machine Press, and now writes the dispatches she wishes she'd had access to a decade ago.
Annie Chan Talk is where she translates China for the world — and helps the world reach China.
Latest
Southeast Asia · 12 min
Guides discuss affiliate commission as a marketing cost. It is not. It stacks directly on platform take, and in three Southeast Asian markets the combined number is larger than the gross margin most brands are working with.
On the record
Effie Awards Greater China, Golden Mouse, Hooray, TMA, TopDigital, Golden Touchpoint, the Shanghai International Advertising Awards, and the China International Advertising Festival. Judging teaches you more about what actually worked than winning ever did.
Weekly · Free
Every Monday, one dispatch on what's actually working in China — and one cross-border arbitrage Western brands keep missing.
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What the report actually shows
Real output from the August index, not a mock-up
Free · Monthly
L'Oréal is the most talked-about Western beauty brand in China this month, and 97% of that talk was paid for. Strip the paid posts out and YSL is the one China actually loves. 12 brands, roughly 2,300 posts, method published in full.
Read the August indexSoutheast Asia · 12 min
Two policy changes have quietly rewritten the economics of selling into Southeast Asia from outside it. One lets buyers keep the product and the money. The other removes the main reason cross-border looked cheap.
Southeast Asia · 13 min
In Thailand, platform penetration runs 75, 67 and 51 percent. Those add to well over one hundred, which means the same shoppers are on all three. The platform decision is not about who you reach — it is about which demand mechanic your product can survive.
