China entry: PR and social media ads for foreign brands

Companies from Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and outside China can complete business verification themselves in the Douyin Merchant Center (抖音商家中心), submitting their own registration documents. Corporate verification is by document review only: an application letter signed or stamped by an authorized signatory, plus a bank account certificate or statement. A company without a company seal can have an authorized signatory, such as a director or legal representative, sign instead. The application is submitted by the company’s handler or operator in mainland China, and review usually takes 0 to 1 working days (page updated 13 October 2026).⁠⁴

Opening an Ocean Engine ad account takes the advertiser’s entity, industry and content qualifications; special industries also submit their industry licence, and the industry chosen when the account is opened must match the ads run later.⁠⁵ That checklist is written for mainland Chinese companies, so what an overseas company needs for an ad account is confirmed with the platform case by case.

Xiaohongshu has opened enterprise professional account verification to companies in the regions it has opened, such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia, and only in the industries it has opened. An overseas company submits its local registration documents and any industry licence it needs, which must be held by the company itself, with translations of documents not in Chinese (page updated 12 October 2026).⁠⁶

Companies in some regions outside China can register a WeChat Service Account; for accounts registered outside China only the Service Account type is supported for now, one per company, and it can be used only after WeChat verification.⁠⁷ The page does not list which regions are open.

Weibo verifies overseas companies as enterprise accounts too; changing the verified company runs offline, with the help of the overseas agency that handled the verification.⁠⁸ That page does not say what an overseas company submits the first time, so it is confirmed case by case.

Ads may not use terms such as “国家级 (national-level)”, “最高级 (highest-grade)” or “最佳 (best)” (Advertising Law, Article 9(3)); figures, statistics, survey results and quotations in an ad must be true and accurate and state their source (Article 11).⁠¹⁰ This site follows the same rule: in Chinese it says “头部”, never “顶级 (top-class)”.

Narcotic, psychotropic, toxic medical and radioactive drugs and other special drugs, drug-related precursor chemicals, and drugs, medical devices and treatments for drug rehabilitation may not be advertised (Article 15). Tobacco may not be advertised in mass media, public places, on public transport or outdoors, and no tobacco ad may be sent to minors (Article 22). Infant dairy products, drinks and other foods claimed to replace breast milk wholly or in part may not be advertised in mass media or public places (Article 20).⁠¹⁰

Ads for medical treatment, drugs, medical devices, pesticides, veterinary drugs and health foods, and any other ads that laws or administrative regulations require to be reviewed, must be reviewed by the advertising review authority before publication, and may not run without it (Advertising Law, Article 46).⁠¹⁰ The Internet Advertising Measures add foods for special medical purposes to the list, forbid cutting, splicing or changing an approved ad, and forbid running these ads in disguise as health or wellness tips (Articles 7 and 8).⁠⁹ Ads for drugs, medical devices, health foods and foods for special medical purposes must show their approval number prominently (Article 9 of the interim review measures).⁠¹¹

Ads must be identifiable as ads, and mass media may not run ads disguised as news reports (Advertising Law, Article 14).⁠¹⁰ Online, goods or services in paid search rankings must be clearly marked 广告 (“ad”), and so must content that sells through knowledge sharing, experience posts or reviews with a purchase link attached (Internet Advertising Measures, Article 9).⁠⁹ How a creator’s sponsored post must be labelled in China, the US and Canada is set out under channel operations.

Platforms turn away more categories than the law bans. One Ocean Engine help page lists, besides the industries the law prohibits, a separate list of industries Toutiao (今日头条) does not promote, such as WeChat resellers (微商) and personal shoppers (代购).⁠¹² So a category the law allows may still be refused by a given platform; each platform’s rules at the time of the campaign decide.