Website Localisation for China: It's Not Translation. It's Rebuilding.

Price something at 888 RMB and you’re signalling prosperity. Price it at 444 and you’re associating your product with death. That’s the gap between a translated website and a localised one. Real localisation for China goes way beyond language. It touches payments, trust indicators, content tone, customer service speed, and cultural choices that most foreign companies don’t realise they’re getting wrong until the damage is already done.

Localisation at a Glance

Area	What’s Required
Language	Simplified Chinese for mainland (95%+ users)
Payments	Alipay + WeChat Pay (90%+ mobile payments market)
Trust signals	ICP badge, Chinese phone number, QQ contact, testimonials
Content tone	Formal, respectful, storytelling over hard sell
Social proof	Customer counts, years in business, satisfaction rates, video testimonials
Customer service	Under 5 min phone, under 2 min WeChat/QQ, Mandarin mandatory
Cultural adaptation	Local imagery, number symbolism, political/cultural sensitivity review

Language: Simplified Chinese, No Exceptions

Mainland China means Simplified Chinese. Over 95% of users on the mainland read and write Simplified. Traditional Chinese is for Taiwan and Hong Kong. If the mainland is your market, there’s nothing to discuss.

The actual mistake isn’t the character set though. It’s quality. Machine-translated Chinese reads awkwardly. Chinese written by a non-native speaker reads worse. Both kill credibility on the first line. Content has to come from native Simplified Chinese speakers who know the audience. Not a place to save money.

Payments: Alipay and WeChat Pay or Nothing

Payment Method	Market Position
Alipay + WeChat Pay combined	90%+ of mobile payments, 969 million users
Credit cards (Visa, Mastercard)	Exist but rarely used for online purchases

Alipay and WeChat Pay hold over 90% of China’s mobile payments market between them. 969 million mobile payment users. Credit cards exist in China but online they’re not the default. Not even close.

If a Chinese consumer hits your checkout and sees only Visa and Mastercard, they’re gone. Not because they can’t use a credit card, but because paying with Alipay or WeChat Pay is just how people buy things online in China. It’s like landing on a US checkout that only accepts bank transfer. Technically possible. Nobody’s going to do it. If your site doesn’t support both, you basically don’t have a checkout for Chinese customers.

Alipay and WeChat Pay combined: over 90% of China’s mobile payments. 969 million users. If your checkout only shows Visa and Mastercard, it’s not a checkout.

Trust Signals: What Chinese Users Check First

Chinese internet users have a specific set of things they look for before engaging with a website. Different from Western expectations, and missing them doesn’t make you look foreign. It makes you look suspicious.

ICP number in the footer. Chinese phone number. QQ as a contact channel, which signals local accessibility in a way that an email address alone doesn’t. And customer testimonials, especially from other Chinese buyers.

Skip all of that and the site reads as either foreign or not legitimate. Either way, people aren’t buying.

Content Tone: Drop the Hard Sell

Western websites lead with bold claims and casual confidence. Chinese audiences don’t respond to that the same way.

Formality matters. Respect matters. Storytelling that builds trust over the course of a page works better than a headline that screams “We’re the best.” Think less about selling and more about earning credibility through narrative. “Here’s our history, here’s how many customers trust us, here’s what we stand for” beats “Here’s why you should buy from us” almost every time in the Chinese market. Companies that bring their Western marketing voice to China without adjusting it tend to come across as either aggressive or superficial. Not what you want when you’re trying to build trust with a new market.

Social Proof: Show the Numbers

Social proof works everywhere. In China it’s closer to a requirement than a nice-to-have.

Chinese consumers look for specific, visible metrics: customer counts, years in business, satisfaction percentages, video testimonials from real people. If you have 50,000 customers, don’t be modest about it. Put the number on the homepage. If you’ve been operating for 15 years, say so prominently. Video testimonials outperform written quotes significantly. The more concrete your proof is, with real numbers attached, the more it actually moves Chinese buyers.

Customer Service: Chinese Speed, Not Western Speed

Metric	Expectation
Peak season availability	24/7
Phone response time	Under 5 minutes
WeChat/QQ response time	Under 2 minutes
Language	Mandarin mandatory

Most foreign companies are not ready for what customer service looks like in China.

During peak seasons, 24/7 availability is standard. Response time expectations are measured in minutes: under 5 minutes for phone calls, under 2 minutes for WeChat or QQ messages. Mandarin-speaking support is mandatory. If your customer service is English-only, Chinese consumers read that as the company not being serious about their market.

Local competitors answer in 90 seconds. If you can’t come close to that, you lose the customer.

Under 5 minutes for phone. Under 2 minutes for WeChat. Mandarin mandatory. That’s the baseline, not a stretch goal.

Cultural Adaptation: Where Most Companies Get Burned

Localisation past this point starts feeling more like navigating a minefield than checking boxes.

Numbers. In Chinese culture, 8 means wealth and prosperity. 6 means smooth luck. 9 represents longevity. And 4 is associated with death. These aren’t quaint superstitions. They’re embedded in how Chinese consumers perceive branding, pricing, and product names. Price something at 888 RMB and it reads as intentional, auspicious. Price it at 444 and you look either ignorant or careless. Neither is a good look.

8 means prosperity. 6 means luck. 9 means longevity. 4 means death. Get your pricing and product numbers wrong and Chinese consumers notice immediately.

Imagery. Stock photos of Western faces, Western offices, Western lifestyles create distance instantly. Chinese users want to see their own market reflected. Replace Western visuals with images that feel local.

Political and cultural sensitivities. Maps that don’t show Taiwan as part of China. References to Tibet or Xinjiang that could be interpreted as politically sensitive. Imagery touching cultural taboos. These aren’t theoretical risks. They get sites blocked. They get brands called out publicly. Companies that treat this stuff as an afterthought tend to find out the hard way.