RED Carries 89.4% of China's Skincare Dupe Conversation

RED (小红书) carried 89.4% of China's social conversation about skincare dupes, the affordable substitutes for premium products, across three social platforms in 2024-2025, but only 19.9% of all skincare conversation, a 4.5× over-index, according to Moojing Market Intelligence social listening, which makes RED the centre of value-seeking discovery in Chinese skincare.

This article covers the fifth chapter of the full report, which turns from sales to conversation and asks where Chinese consumers talk about beauty, and who is doing the talking.

Key figures

• 89.4%: RED's share of the skincare dupes conversation, 2024-2025
• 19.9%: RED's share of all skincare conversation over the same period
• 61.7%: Weibo's share of fragrance conversation
• TGI 258: the vitamin C and retinol routine conversation among posters aged 26-30 on Douyin, 2025
• 51.8%: RED's share of the conversation about acne in 2025

Method and scope: Moojing Market Intelligence social listening across Weibo (微博), RED and Douyin (抖音) from January 2024, which counts posts and interactions, measures conversation only and is not a proxy for demand. It covers three platforms, is not the total market and is kept separate from the report's other data.

Where do Chinese consumers talk about cheaper skincare alternatives?#

Chinese consumers talk about cheaper alternatives to premium skincare almost entirely on RED, which carried 89.4% of the conversation about skincare dupes (护肤平替) across three social platforms in 2024-2025, according to Moojing Market Intelligence, even though it carried 19.9% of all skincare conversation, the smallest share of the three platforms.

That 4.5× over-index makes RED the centre of value-seeking discovery in the category, although most of that conversation dates from 2025, and the conversation is still small but growing quickly, from 627 posts in 2024 to 6,172 in 2025, a rate of growth that is directional and should not be read as a headline on its own. Fragrance is the mirror image, with RED holding 10.9% of fragrance conversation and Weibo leading at 61.7%, largely on the back of brand and celebrity campaign posts, and our report on China's perfume and fragrance market covers that category as a whole.

Exhibit 19. Source: Moojing Market Intelligence, social listening across three social platforms, share of posts by platform, January 2024 to December 2025. Conversation volume only.

Which beauty conversations held up in 2025?#

Of four large beauty conversations across three Chinese social platforms, only the routine of vitamin C by day and retinol by night (早C晚A) held its 2024 level in 2025, at an index of 98, according to Moojing Market Intelligence social listening, while anti-ageing (抗老) fell to 83, fragrance (香水) to 78 and Chinese skincare brands (国货护肤) to 61.

Each conversation is indexed to its own 2024 monthly average, so the readings show the direction of each conversation rather than its size, and on that measure the conversation about Chinese skincare brands fell by about two-fifths in a single year, while the routine conversation was the only one of the four to hold its level. The monthly index behind these four readings is in the full report.

Who is talking about skincare in China?#

On Douyin, all four large beauty conversations peak among posters aged 21-30, and the vitamin C and retinol routine is the most concentrated, with a target group index (TGI) of 258 at ages 26-30 in 2025, according to Moojing Market Intelligence social listening.

A TGI of 258 means that age group is two and a half times as likely to post about the routine as the platform average. On Weibo the anti-ageing conversation skews the other way, with its TGI rising through the forties to 191 at ages 46-50, so a brand that wants to reach either conversation has to match the age profile to the platform, and RED returns no age profile at all. Sentiment is overwhelmingly positive, as is typical of beauty conversation, so the more useful reading is the negative share, which is 1.3-2.5% of classified posts for the three skincare conversations against 8.3% for fragrance, where campaign-driven volume tends to bring more argument with it. Our article on what Chinese consumers mean by clean beauty reads another part of the same conversation.

Exhibit 21. Source: Moojing Market Intelligence, social listening, Douyin, 2025. Age TGI by keyword, where 100 is the platform average. Conversation only.

Where does China's conversation about acne happen?#

RED carries half of the conversation about acne (祛痘) across the three social platforms, and its share rose from 48.3% in 2024 to 51.8% in 2025, according to Moojing Market Intelligence social listening, while Douyin's share rose fastest, from 25.9% to 30.1%, in a conversation that was a little smaller overall in 2025 than in 2024.

On Douyin, the people posting about acne are also getting a little younger, although this is one platform only, since between the first half of 2025 and the first half of 2026 posters under 31 went from 38.3% to 41.4% of the platform's anti-acne audience, with the 26-30 group rising from 21.0% to 23.2%, although posters aged 31-35 remain the largest group, at 25.6%. Because 2026 volumes on two platforms are still filling, we compare the shares of posters in each age group rather than the number of posts, which assumes that the filling is spread evenly across ages, and we read samples of posts for relevance before using any keyword, including this one.

What this means for brands#

For brands, we believe the conversation data point to RED as the place where mass and mid-priced skincare is discovered and compared in China, and so as the natural home for seeding those lines, including anti-acne products, according to Moojing Market Intelligence's H1 2026 report.

Premium discovery, on the other hand, belongs on the platforms where the routine and anti-ageing conversations take place, matched to the age of the people having them, because RED, as the home of the conversation about cheaper substitutes, is a less natural place to expect premium discovery. The monthly conversation index behind these findings is in the full report, and our China beauty market intelligence page sets out what else we cover in the category.