User number of social media in China 2020-2021

The alternative social media scene behind the “Great Firewall” of China, whose doors have remained shut to international internet corporations, has been thriving. As of 2021, the Asian giant housed about 983 million active social media netizens of the world.

A global view of social networking

The number of social network users across the globe rapidly rose to 3.6 billion people in 2020 and was expected to continue growing. Facebook topped the charts in 2021 with 2.9 billion active social media users with YouTube following behind. Meanwhile, instant messaging apps WeChat and QQ, and blogging sites Sina Weibo and QZone have placed Chinese platforms on the radar as prominent social media players.

Chinese fascination with microblogging

Apart from instant messaging, the trend of microblogging has swept across the multitudes of netizens in China. Comparable to sites like Twitter, China has its own term for microblogging - "weibo", and such networks have been used extensively as a space for free-speech. As of the end of 2018, a total of 350 million individuals in the country were registered microblog users. Across the board of microblogging platforms available in China, Sina Corporation’s Weibo has emerged as the leading platform with its number of monthly active users having peaked at 573 million in the third quarter of 2021.