China Digital Digest Weekly: Exploring the Chinese Digital Landscape

Hi folks, we are back with our weekly edition of China’s Digital Digest, wherein we bring you weekly updates on China’s digital space. The report takes a quick glance at China’s complex and rapidly evolving social media landscape by providing updates on the latest happenings across the social media industry. Here are the major highlights of the report.

1. Tencent’s Open-Source Hunyuan Image 3.0 Jumps to No.1 on LMArena’s Text-to-Image Leaderboard

https://www.chinadailyhk.com/hk/article/621215

Tencent’s newly open-sourced Hunyuan Image 3.0 has vaulted to the top spot on the LMArena text-to-image leaderboard, edging out high-profile proprietary systems including Google’s “nano-banana” (Gemini 2.5 Flash Image Preview).

The ranking is based on LMArena’s human “blind-vote” battles in which users pick preferred outputs without knowing which model generated them. Hunyuan Image 3.0 is positioned as a native multimodal, autoregressive model aimed at both understanding and generation; Tencent released the model with weights and code under an open-source license on Hugging Face.

2. Indonesia Revokes TikTok’s Protests-Linked Licence Suspension

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/06/indonesia-reinstates-tiktok-license-after-the-company-shares-data.html

Indonesia has revoked a suspension on TikTok’s local operating licence after the social media platform shared data requested by the government.

The company provided data related to TikTok Live traffic escalation and monetisation activity during the period of August 25-30, according to Alexander Sabar, a director general at the Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs. The earlier suspension followed a September 23 letter in which TikTok told the ministry its internal policies prevented it from fully complying with the data request. Officials said the company had submitted partial information but failed to meet the government’s full request.

3. Chinese Budget Retailer Miniso Bets Big on Collectible Designer Toys

https://www.morningstar.com/news/dow-jones/2025092964/chinese-retailer-miniso-jumps-on-collectible-toys-train-with-spinoff

Chinese retail giant Miniso aims to become a leading player in the designer toy market, as it broadens its digital presence by tailoring e-commerce initiatives to platform-specific consumer behaviours while simultaneously reinforcing its core strength in the offline shopping experience.

Miniso was experimenting with product customisation to better align with the unique attributes of various e-commerce platforms in China, capital market director Christina Zhu Mengyun said during a recent interview at the company’s headquarters in Guangzhou, the capital of China’s eastern Guangdong province. Founded in 2013 as a variety store offering affordable accessories and make-up products, Miniso shifted its mission last year to “become the world’s leading IP operation platform”, focusing on intellectual property-based toys and goods.

4. China’s Grocery Giants Use Aldi Tactics To Lure Frugal Shoppers

https://www.magzter.com/de/stories/newspaper/The-Straits-Times/CHINAS-SUPERMARKET-GIANTS-TAP-STORE-BRANDS-TO-LURE-FRUGAL-SHOPPERS

Affordable croissants and unbranded detergents—the staples of discount grocers in the US and Europe—are now making their way onto shelves in China. Facing sluggish sales, many Chinese supermarket chains are turning to private-label products to win back cost-conscious shoppers.

Taking cues from German discounters like Aldi and Lidl, as well as Amazon’s Whole Foods—which has expanded its low-cost 365 brand as far as Singapore—these retailers hope to revive growth. With consumers tightening their budgets amid economic uncertainty, sales at China’s top 100 grocery chains stagnated last year, while store numbers dropped by nearly 10%.

Wrapping Up

The vast and diverse nature of the Chinese Social Media space makes it incredibly challenging to keep a tab on the rapid developments taking place. However, China’s Digital Digest brings you all the latest updates from there to keep you abreast of all the evolving trends.

To delve deeper into the findings of our latest report, click here.