If you venture deep into the city of Zhengzhou, you might come across a surreal scene: groups of men in their 30s and 40s who are gritty, middle-aged, and seemingly out of step with Xiaohongshu’s polished aesthetic. And yet, on a platform built for young women, they are generating millions, or even tens of millions of RMB in annual revenue. Their secret? A content business model engineered to exploit algorithms with unrelenting precision. Most come from modest backgrounds. Many hold only a middle school diploma.
Let’s rewind to 2018. Live commerce was just starting to gain momentum on Taobao, with influencers like Li Jiaqi and Viya capturing national attention. Around the same time, Douyin surpassed Kuaishou to become China’s leading content distribution app. Few paid attention to Xiaohongshu then, a niche platform with fewer than ten million monthly active users.
But in that same year, a quiet shift began in Zhengzhou.
For Henan, a largely agricultural province that had long been sidelined in China’s digital economy, Xiaohongshu became a window of opportunity. Limited by scarce capital and few brand partnerships, many local merchants remained stuck at the bottom of the supply chain. Liu Zhi, an e-commerce veteran with a decade of experience on Taobao, recalled that Zhengzhou hosted just 2,000 Tmall storefronts at the time, only a tenth of Hangzhou’s count.
Xiaohongshu had just rebranded as a “lifestyle content platform,” but it found itself squeezed between Douyin’s viral pull and Taobao’s commercial clout. Largely overlooked by major players, the platform inadvertently opened the door for a different kind of actor. For Zhengzhou operators, that oversight proved to be an opportunity.
But as more prospectors arrived, the Xiaohongshu stage began pulling back the generosity it once offered. Newcomers continue to stream in, while the early players are now quietly exiting the scene.
The traffic myth
“We used to joke that we were the nomads of the internet. Wherever there’s traffic, where the water and grass are lush, we move.”
That’s how Da Ming (pseudonym) described his cohort at an offline training session in April on Xiaohongshu’s content-driven e-commerce. “Xiaohongshu’s traffic is premium and abundant,” he added.
He shared a case study to illustrate how traffic on Xiaohongshu could unlock overnight riches. In 2022, he posted a simple product recommendation on a brand new account with zero followers. The note featured a bed with a newborn pillow subtly embedded in the image. The caption? Just one line in Mandarin: “My mother-in-law praised my purchase.” Without any paid promotions, the post garnered over 100,000 views and generated more than RMB 100,000 (USD 14,000) in sales. All at virtually zero cost.
The training room was packed. Dozens of e-commerce founders and operators took photos of the slides with their phones, eager to study the formula. Some had traveled from outside Henan just to attend.
Lin Qing (pseudonym), a veteran Xiaohongshu operator with five years of experience, had first heard of Zhengzhou’s approach a few years earlier. But in 2024, he started noticing the name coming up more and more, particularly when merchants began seeing a new wave of competitors climbing search rankings. These newcomers were overtaking longtime brands at startling speed.
Tracing it back, they all pointed to a common source: Zhengzhou.
The group isn’t a formal organization. Rather, it consists of loosely affiliated e-commerce firms in Zhengzhou that specialize in Xiaohongshu content and recommendation posts. They started with unbranded wellness products and gray market items, later branching into other categories like beauty, homeware, and appliances.
Instead of spending on influencers or celebrities, they operate at scale. Teams of editors generate content en masse, posting through amateur accounts to bypass Xiaohongshu’s paid ad ecosystem.
Their favored tactics include faux user reviews, casual endorsements, and engagement bait. One format features a prompt like “Which black coffee have you repurchased more than five times?” Then, using another account, someone replies in the comments, subtly recommending a specific product, again, from the perspective of a fellow user.
This plays perfectly into Xiaohongshu’s ethos: discovery-driven, peer-led, and rooted in the authentic feel of shared personal experience. But behind these seemingly candid posts are workstations churning out artificially crafted stories and scenes. This invisible army, hidden behind the screen, quietly shapes user preferences one post at a time.
In Mandarin, Da Ming calls the approach “flying low to the ground.” It avoids prestige, aiming solely for conversions. “Even if you lose money, the only cost is labor,” he said.
One brand operator put it more bluntly:
“He used some of the cheapest tactics to generate real traffic. We have to pay to get the same.”
In recent years, Xiaohongshu’s traffic has become significantly pricier. At the same time, marketing budgets are shrinking.
Chen Jue (pseudonym), a media planner for a lingerie brand in Shanghai, noted that her department’s marketing budget was slashed by nearly half over the past two years. Yet spending demands haven’t decreased. “If we go through Xiaohongshu’s Pugongying (influencer marketing) platform, we have to pay a 10% service fee. Without paid boosts, content hardly reaches anyone.” She observed that influencers with an average reach of 1,000 views per post typically dropped to 600 or 700 when posting sponsored content.
Worse, conversions have suffered. In one week alone, Chen’s company spent over RMB 17,000 (USD 2,400) on Xiaohongshu campaigns, up nearly 29% year-on-year, yet saw a decline in sales.
That’s when the Zhengzhou model caught her eye. During a Singles’ Day postmortem, her team found a competitor dominating their category. Search any lingerie-related keyword on Xiaohongshu, and every result seemed to point to that brand.
On Xiaohongshu, ostensibly the final stop for consumer decision-making, owning a keyword is akin to owning the user’s mind. To this end, brands flood the platform with content aimed at locking in high-conversion keywords. For example, a body oil brand might target “dry skin body oil” or “winter moisturizing oil” to ensure their product appears at the top of related searches.
But after spending heavily on content placement, Chen’s team realized most prime positions had already been captured. Learning that their competitor was using the Zhengzhou model, her boss issued a clear directive: replicate it.
The Zhengzhou origin story
Liu Zhi’s first real shock came in May 2019. He and a few peers had formed an e-commerce learning group, visiting two companies per day for case studies and best practices.
At the time, only four companies in Zhengzhou were focusing on Xiaohongshu. During one visit, Liu was floored. The company, comprising 300–400 employees, focused exclusively on Xiaohongshu as its only traffic channel. He watched a fresh college graduate singlehandedly generate over RMB 1 million (USD 140,000) in sales per month just by writing posts on how to prepare for pregnancy. All of it was powered by free, organic traffic that redirected to Taobao.
“It shattered everything I thought I knew about e-commerce,” Liu said. A journalism major with strong opinions about writing quality, he initially scoffed at the content’s aesthetic. The author of the viral post? A wiry, dark-skinned young man, about 170 centimeters tall, with no particular presence—basically someone you’d never imagine thriving on Xiaohongshu.
Yet it worked. Crude visuals, everyday employees, and outsized sales. Liu sat in stunned silence for nearly ten minutes after the meeting.
Not long after, he and his business partner decided to clone the model from scratch. They hired three fresh graduates, set up a Tmall store, and gave each recruit ten phones. Their task: publish 30 Xiaohongshu posts daily promoting products like sunscreen, hair removal tools, and general recommendations. Back then, the platform’s duplication filters were lax. A few tweaks to each post were enough to avoid detection. The space was so empty that even just listing product functions could drive conversions. Despite their inexperience, the team generated RMB 2 million (USD 280,000) in revenue within a month.
Liu would later sum up the Zhengzhou model this way: “Use people who are 60% qualified to create 60% content, but enforce 120% execution.”
If you were a Xiaohongshu editor in Zhengzhou, here’s what your day would have looked like. The night before, you’d scroll through Xiaohongshu, finding viral post templates in your assigned product category. You’d forward them to your team leader for approval. The next day, you’d replicate the format step by step: photograph, retouch, write the caption. Before leaving work, you’d post your assigned six notes and ensure they were indexed properly. But your job didn’t end there. You had to monitor performance, flag any post that crossed 100 likes, and immediately add strategic comments and steer traffic toward external shopping links.
Liu likened this operation to a digital assembly line. The goal, he said, is not creativity but reliability:
“What does an assembly line do? It minimizes the need for thinking. Just screw it in right. That’s all.”
The magic wasn’t in chasing trends, but in standardization. The real value of the Zhengzhou model was its reproducible, error-free protocols.
It demanded no talent, no originality. Just execution.
Former Xiaohongshu editor Zhang Kexin called it mechanical. “If a post goes viral with someone holding toothpaste in front of plants, we’d recreate it by holding a makeup remover in front of our office plants.” Everything from images to copy and text effects would be reproduced.
The aim was to push out enough quantity to raise the odds of going viral. With enough output, anyone could get up to speed in a week.
Zhang once tried to do something more thoughtful, integrating IP- and character-driven narratives from popular female-oriented games. Her angle of recommending products based on character preferences won internal praise. But the platform flagged it for violating commercial content rules, and the post wasn’t indexed. It was all for nothing. After that, she stuck to the playbook.
“We were just factory ‘robots’ selling products,” she said.
Zhengzhou-based e-commerce companies following this model often hire over 100 editors to sustain output. “So you can’t afford to have people with egos,” Liu said.
He once met a postpartum care service provider who insisted on hiring editors with taste, writing skills, and knowledge of the maternity industry. She brought on a former newspaper journalist. The results? Nothing noteworthy on Xiaohongshu.
In essence, the Zhengzhou model doesn’t seek creators. It recruits salespeople. And during those golden years, the platform minted a slew of overnight millionaires. It didn’t seem to matter what seeds you planted, as anything sown seemed to yield gold.
The secret sauce
The genius of the Zhengzhou model isn’t just in the method, it’s in the word “Zhengzhou.”
The city’s population scale offers immense labor advantages. A Xiaohongshu junior operator earns a base salary of about RMB 3,500 (USD 490) per month in Zhengzhou. Most companies don’t offer social insurance. By contrast, similar roles in Shanghai or Hangzhou cost two to three times more. The output isn’t just scalable, but labor-intensive and built on razor-thin costs.
Take that model out of Zhengzhou, and it struggles to survive.
After deciding to replicate the Zhengzhou approach, Chen Jue’s company deployed two to three employees to mimic content formats from their competitors. Between January and late February this year, they published 97 posts. Only 19 surpassed 100 likes, with the best one securing 366. But sales didn’t rise. In fact, conversions dropped due to a reallocation of budget away from traditional influencers.
The team was baffled until they learned the competitor employed an 80-person Xiaohongshu team. “No wonder we lost,” Chen said. In an internal meeting, the company’s deputy director summed it up: “An 80-person media team would crush our budget.”
Technically, Chen’s team wasn’t doing badly. By Zhengzhou’s standards, any post with over 50 likes is considered a hit. Liu Zhi confirmed: only with sufficient volume can the occasional breakout post generate real returns.
What truly forced Chen’s team to abandon the effort, however, were customer complaints. “Since we tried this strategy, our complaint rate has doubled,” she said. Users felt the content cheapened the brand.
As a company with over a decade of brand equity, trust had been built with a loyal base. Every product launch included user previews, even packaging feedback. The Zhengzhou playbook, designed for anonymous white-label products, emphasizes attention-grabbing tactics over brand tone. And that contradiction showed. Loyal users felt betrayed.
Even brands that set up teams in Zhengzhou ran into challenges. In July 2024, Le Yan (pseudonym), an experienced Xiaohongshu operator recruited by a non-Henan brand, joined a new Zhengzhou-based team as content director. When he used competitive comparison tactics in campaign posts, the headquarters blocked it, fearing it might damage the brand’s image.
Le Yan was exasperated. “If no one knows your brand on Xiaohongshu, and you don’t provoke comparisons, you won’t get traffic. They want everything, but understand nothing.” Within three months, he left the company. That entire Zhengzhou team was disbanded earlier this year.
Brands that rush into Zhengzhou without a plan often walk away disappointed.
Even basic tactics like comment moderation require strong coordination. One editor may be responsible for monitoring dozens of posts: checking if they are indexed, if they have received comments, if they require paid boosts or rewrites. If a post goes viral, the comment section must be locked down immediately. Replies have to look organic, using different accounts: someone asks the price, another plays the happy customer. If competitors hijack the comments, someone has to fight back. Miss that window, and it’s hard to regain ground later.
What looks like a few casual posts is actually a logistical war. Dozens of phones, SIM cards, registered accounts, and a tightly managed operating system are needed to make it work.
Any misstep can derail the entire system.
Last year, a friend of Lin Qing’s tried launching a Zhengzhou branch, hired several dozen employees, and even poached a proven Zhengzhou team. After six months, their monthly GMV was still under RMB 100,000 (USD 14,000), losing over RMB 100,000 monthly.
Lin felt it came down to the success of the Zhengzhou group in terms of nailing timing, geography, and execution. “You can’t replicate it now,” Lin added.
Why? Because when everyone’s chasing the same gold rush, the sea stops being blue.
The tide recedes
There’s an unspoken rule within the Zhengzhou group: never eat softshell turtle at company dinners.
The legend dates back to a gathering of Xiaohongshu e-commerce bosses at a restaurant known for its turtle dishes. Midway through the meal, their phones began buzzing nonstop. Panic swept the table: operators were reporting account bans in real time. “Each of us lost hundreds of accounts,” Liu Zhi said. The entire table was wiped out. Since then, turtle cuisine has been considered cursed.
In many ways, the Zhengzhou group’s history is one of love and war with Xiaohongshu.
Its bread and butter has always juxtaposed with avoiding official ad channels, dodging fees, and leveraging organic traffic. But its mass produced, cookie-cutter content diluted Xiaohongshu’s premium content pool and undermined the platform’s prized sense of authenticity.
For Xiaohongshu, which has long struggled to commercialize without alienating its community, the Zhengzhou model was a ticking time bomb. Regulation soon followed.
In September 2020, Xiaohongshu launched a campaign to crack down on misleading marketing. Over 210,000 posts were removed and more than 7,000 accounts penalized. In early 2021, the Pugongying platform went live, introducing mandatory disclosure for sponsored content and tightening oversight.
In the years since, Xiaohongshu has made repeated efforts to expel such operations and purge low-quality posts. But the Zhengzhou group has proven remarkably adaptable.
In the early days, Xiaohongshu allowed accounts to register with just a Weibo handle. Every operator hoarded accounts. Later, the platform required phone number verification and enforced a policy of tying each account to a SIM card. In response, Zhengzhou firms turned to external freelancers, paying RMB 3–5 (USD 0.42–0.70) per post to have their content published through everyday users.
Content styles evolved too. Review posts went from edited stock images to real-life photos and hands-on demos. When platform rules banned comparative dissing, they softened the language: “They are prettier, we’re more effective.” When that got flagged, it became “They are good for oily skin, we’re better for dry skin.”
Still, account bans are part of daily life. A good run might last a few months. A short one? Just a few weeks. “If you’ve never had an account banned in Zhengzhou, you’re not doing Xiaohongshu right,” Liu said.
To survive, operators have gotten creative. One account dies? Use another. One account type dies? Register every kind, be it as a persona, amateur, corporate, or key opinion consumer. Follow the algorithm wherever it flows. If the container changes, just keep the content flowing.
One brand isn’t enough. Register three to five trademarks at once. If one keyword is blocked, repackage the product under a new name and resume sales.
Diversify the product line. A post seemingly about travel essentials for the Dragon Boat Festival might feature a dozen seemingly unrelated beauty products, all from the same company, just white-labeled differently. A post ranking the best anti-hair loss shampoos might include six brands, all owned by the same firm.
That’s the survival logic of the Zhengzhou group: brands may vanish, accounts may die, but as long as Xiaohongshu exists, there will be new cracks to find and exploit.
But the cracks are narrowing. In March, Xiaohongshu issued multiple notices banning off-platform sales links and cracking down on low-quality, repetitive posts. Its algorithm now favors original, high-quality content.
One operator tried launching a “medical student persona” team, with five people in lab coats posing as professionals. The first video triggered a platform violation for false identity, and the account was shut down in a day. “Doctor personas now get banned 100% of the time,” he said.
Today, Zhengzhou’s small operators, especially those without deep pockets or backup plans, are closing shop or pivoting. The only ones still trying their luck are the legacy firms. But as early as 2023, some forward-thinking players had already started allocating part of their budget to official, above-board campaigns.
Everyone knows: building a brand is the endgame. But for many of these self-made entrepreneurs—people without degrees or connections—that path remains elusive. One local merchant put it bluntly: “Some Zhengzhou companies have hundreds of employees, but they still think like street vendors. They pay salaries through Alipay.”
Do Zhengzhou’s tactics still hold value?
Lin Qing believes that for established brands spending eight-figure sums annually, it’s still worth running a team out of Zhengzhou. “You can supplement your official campaigns, or use Zhengzhou to scale your existing playbook,” he said. A well-known cosmetics brand did just that, building a 100-person Xiaohongshu team in Zhengzhou with plans to double it by the end of this year.
“Zhengzhou is good at this, knowing Xiaohongshu inside and out,” said one former editor who worked at a local agency. “Many of my clients from Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Hangzhou had no idea how to generate traffic. We did it for them.”
As for Xiaohongshu, born as a platform for sharing real-life moments, it continues to wrestle with the tension between lifestyle and monetization. As long as product discovery remains the engine of its community, Zhengzhou’s content factories will never fully disappear.
KrASIA Connection features translated and adapted content that was originally published by 36Kr. This article was written by Xiao Sijia for 36Kr.