China's Internet, Mapped to the Apps You Already Use
Pick China Directory (PCDir.com) is an English-language guide to the websites and apps that most people in China actually use. Every entry pairs a Chinese platform with the American product it most resembles — WeChat with WhatsApp, Douyin with TikTok, Pinduoduo with Amazon — so a reader who has never opened any of them can place one in a single line.
China's internet runs on different rules. The largest US social platforms don't operate in mainland China, and the homegrown services that filled that gap grew up under a separate regulatory framework. The result is a parallel ecosystem: when someone asks what China's YouTube or China's Amazon is, the honest answer is usually several products rather than one.
Early Chinese platforms copied US models closely. The split came later, and mobile accelerated it. With smartphones everywhere, companies built apps first and treated websites as an afterthought — WeChat's mini-programs and Official Accounts let businesses operate inside the chat app instead of on the open web, and some companies have retired their websites altogether. What survives is often clunkier than the app it belongs to.
That is what makes a directory useful. We cover more than twenty categories — social media, short video, live streaming, film and TV, music and podcasts, gaming, web novels and anime, AI models and apps, software and digital tools, e-commerce and fintech, news, search, travel and local life, and more — and for each platform we explain what it does, who runs it, and whether it can be reached from outside China.
Entries are written from publicly available information and checked against the platforms' own sites. Where a fact moves quickly — user numbers, app-store availability, who owns whom — we date it or leave it out.
Start with the categories above, or browse the full list on the home page. If something looks wrong or is missing, send it through [Feedback]: corrections are how the directory gets better.
FAQ
Who runs Pick China Directory?
Pick China Directory is an independent project run by [Webbase], based in [China], publishing in English since [2026].
Can I submit my own website for inclusion?
Yes — send the request by email, and include both an English and a Chinese version of each item below so the entry can be written and
checked without a round of follow-up:
- Website name
- Website URL
- One-line description
- Full website description
- A short FAQ about the website (the questions users most often ask)
- Optional: website favicon in PNG format
Inclusion decisions are editorial and made by us; business enquiries go to the same address.
Where does your information come from?
From the platforms' own websites and public announcements, plus established press coverage where a company does not publish a figure itself. Details that move quickly — monthly users, app-store availability, ownership — are dated where we state them, and left out when we cannot verify them. Every platform page links to its official site, so you can check the source directly.
How accurate are the US equivalents you pair each platform with?
They are a recognition aid, not a claim of equivalence. The pairing tells you what kind of product you are looking at; it does not mean the two work the same way or are comparable in size. Some Chinese platforms have no close US counterpart at all, and some map onto more than one American product — treat the comparison as a starting point.
I found something inaccurate on a page. How do I report it?
Send the page URL and what looks wrong through the FAQ link in the footer, or by email. Every report is checked against the platform's own information before the page is changed, and corrections from readers are the main way errors get caught.