For decades, China’s internet economy has been a closed entity. Now some of the biggest companies are opening their doors to outsiders.
Although China has long invited foreign companies to set up shop within its borders, the internet has been shut down. Dominated by a handful of local players – such as Tencent’s messaging app WeChat, ByteDance’s TikTok equivalent Douyin, X-like Weibo and lifestyle content app Xiaohongshu – the country’s internet is difficult for non-Chinese users to access.
Many of these platforms have traditionally been Mandarin-first, posing registration, verification, and other hurdles for foreign users. Because China’s digital payment ecosystem is integrated into these social media apps, making payments in the country is also a challenge for foreigners.
But recent developments have indicated that China is finally opening its doors and letting foreigners take small steps into its internet economy.
Paying as a tourist in China becomes a lot easier
China has been largely cashless in its major cities for years and is known for its seamless payments ecosystem, which includes major players such as Alipay and Weixin Pay.
Now a major player is helping tourists make payments more easily as they travel around the country.
On August 11, PayPal announced that US PayPal users can use the service to make in-store QR payments at Weixin Pay merchants across China, without having to download additional apps or create a Chinese bank account.
Weixin, also known as WeChat, is owned by the The Chinese technology conglomerate Tencent. Tencent’s cross-border payment platform, TenPay, provides the underlying payment services used by Weixin Pay.
“Through our partnership, international visitors can use their home wallets to make QR code payments at tens of millions of Weixin Pay merchants in mainland China, providing them with a familiar and convenient way to pay,” Wenhui Yang, CEO of TenPay, said in PayPal’s press release.
Jeffrey Towson, the founder of US and China-based retail consultancy TechMoat Consulting, told Business Insider that it was “almost impossible to be a tourist in China” without WeChat Pay or Alipay, and the integration of PayPal and WeChat Pay largely solves that problem.
Allison Malmsten, director of public research at Daxue Consulting, a China-focused strategy consultancy, said China had spent decades developing its own banking system and firewall, making it appear as if “China’s digital universe existed separately from the rest of the world’s digital universe.”
She told Business Insider that PayPal’s integration into WeChat, among other things, shows that China is playing a bigger role globally.
Opening the famous closed internet
China’s social media also invites foreigners.
The latest example is Bilibili, China’s youth-oriented content platform known for its popularity among anime, comics and gaming enthusiasts and which has just begun its international expansion.
Bilibili started an X account this month. It announced in a Wednesday X post that it had just launched its international app, with access to “more countries soon.”
Semafor reported Thursday, citing new job postings and marketing materials distributed to creators, that Bilibili is courting non-Chinese creators and recruiting staff in Japan, the US and Europe.
Bilibili is the latest Chinese video-sharing platform for non-Chinese users, following the launch of TikTok abroad in 2017 and RedNote – known as Xiaohongshu in China – which attracted a large international audience in 2025.
RedNote rose to popularity last year, at a time when TikTok’s future in the US was uncertain as the app faced a ‘divest or ban’ mandate. Many Americans flocked to RedNote instead, some calling themselves “TikTok refugees.”
Towson said TikTok proved that Chinese mobile apps could succeed outside the country, and now every Chinese company he talks to has an international plan. This is partly because domestic Consumption is stagnating and, in some sectors, a slowdown, prompting companies to seek new growth across borders.
“Every company I know is talking about international. Bilibili, I wasn’t talking about that seven years ago. So that’s definitely a big trend,” Towson said.
Race to the world stage with its technology offering
The developments of PayPal and Bilibili take place against the backdrop of Chinese technology companiesin areas such as AI, robotics and electric vehiclescompeting with the US for global dominance.
Chinese startup Moonshot AI made waves in the global tech world with its latest Kimi K3 open-weight AI model, which promises “groundbreaking intelligence” for tasks like coding, knowledge work and reasoning at a lower cost. With AI costs becoming a major concern for businesses, capable open-weight models like Kimi K3 are becoming highly sought after.
Jacob Cooke, the CEO of Beijing-based e-commerce consultancy WPIC Marketing + Technologies, said he sees a trend in Chinese tech and internet companies having globally competitive offerings, “whether it’s Kimi K3’s groundbreaking AI or Bilibili’s unique content ecosystem.”
“In the case of Kimi K3, you have frontier AI available through open weights to build custom applications, and it’s a fraction of the cost of Western models. That’s a very attractive offering for Western companies,” Cooke said.
“These companies are making aggressive, deliberate forays into foreign markets to capitalize on foreign demand,” he added.
