How to choose an influencer in China who sells

Choose an influencer in China by what they have already sold. On Douyin, the creator’s page in the affiliate plaza shows settled sales after refunds, buyer reviews and the categories they move. Start on commission, at 5% to 50% of each order, and write China’s advertising rules into the contract. The brand answers for what the creator says.

Updated October 14, 2026. The November 2023 version of this page sorted influencers into follower tiers borrowed from Instagram and TikTok and quoted a survey figure with no source. This version works from Douyin’s and Xiaohongshu’s own rule books, the livestream regulation in force since February 2026 and our Douyin cost calculator.

China calls them 达人 (creators) or KOLs, and the deal comes in four shapes.

Only the first row pays purely for sales you can count. The others buy attention up front, and you learn afterward whether it sold.

A manager at Chinese apparel maker Yalu Group (雅鹿集团) put a top host’s dedicated session at 1 million to 3 million RMB, with commission of about 10% to 20%, based on the company’s past collaborations. Source: Xinhua (新华网), August 2024. https://www.news.cn/fortune/20240804/ec11b5b85b514e8b9332998d0b23b020/c.html

Followers are the wrong first number

The old advice was to pick a tier, from nano to mega. On Douyin, most of the money sits below the top tier.

More than 570,000 creators doubled their sales year on year during Douyin Mall’s 618 festival in 2026, and creators with fewer than 1 million followers drove more than 80% of creator sales. Source: China National Radio (央广网), citing Douyin’s 2026 618 data report, June 2026. https://www.cnr.cn/mspd/jrhm/20260620/t20260620_527669642.shtml

Douyin itself grades creators by money. Every month, on the 8th, it sets each creator’s level from the previous month’s settled sales: what buyers paid, minus refunds filed within seven days, minus orders the platform flags as abnormal.

Douyin grades creators from L0 to L6 on the 8th of each month, by the previous month’s paid sales net of refunds within seven days and of abnormal orders. Source: Douyin E-commerce (抖音电商), creator level rules, revised March 2026. https://school.jinritemai.com/doudian/web/articlev0/aHRbnsP5fSGu

A creator at L3 sold more than 300,000 RMB of goods last month that buyers didn’t send back. A creator with 3 million followers and no level has sold nothing you can see.

One warning about agency decks. Some still quote a creator’s “reputation score” (带货口碑分). It’s gone.

Douyin abolished its creator reputation score rule on April 1, 2025, and took the score off creator showcases and profile pages by the end of that month. Source: Douyin E-commerce (抖音电商), rule repeal notice, March 2025. https://school.jinritemai.com/doudian/web/articlev0/aJNmFjfDRcGA

Read the creator’s page before you send a sample

A merchant on Douyin finds creators in the affiliate program’s creator plaza (达人广场). It ranks them by settlement rate and flags creators whose linked companies carry a risk warning. Each page holds more than most agency decks.

A creator’s page in Douyin’s creator plaza shows recent settled sales, livestream and video results, followers by gender, age, activity and device, the main categories sold, and earlier brands’ reviews of the creator’s delivery and communication. Source: Douyin E-commerce Learning Center (抖音电商学习中心), creator plaza guide, March 2026. https://school.jinritemai.com/doudian/web/article/110796

Read the settlement rate first. It’s the share of sales still standing after refunds, and Douyin now prices it into the creator’s own costs. Since July 8, 2026, a creator with a weak rating pays Douyin a bigger share of every commission.

Creators rated A, B+ or B pay Douyin a technical service fee of 10% of their commission, creators rated C pay 20% and creators rated D pay 40%. The rating counts settled sales seven days after purchase against paid sales, and requires a clean record on fake orders. Source: Douyin E-commerce Learning Center (抖音电商学习中心), affiliate fee rule explainer, October 2026. https://school.jinritemai.com/doudian/web/articlev0/aJkY84jEGbWa

That matters to you twice. A low-rated creator returns fewer kept orders for the same sample, and will ask for a higher commission to cover the platform’s bigger cut.

So the shortlist comes from four reads: the creator’s level, the settlement rate, the categories sold in the last three months, and two or three full livestream replays. Watch the replays. A host who can’t explain an ingredient in Chinese without a script won’t sell your serum either.

Xingtu (巨量星图), Douyin’s marketplace for sponsored video, shows a different card: an index for reach, value and follower growth, expected plays and an estimated cost per thousand views built from the creator’s latest quote. Use it to compare prices (our China media page covers the buying). It tells you less about sales.

Fake followers cost pennies, and the fines are real

A fake follower costs one or two US cents. A case from 2025 puts an exact price on it.

A media company in Xichong, Sichuan, ran 1,200 phones to sell fake followers to merchants on livestream platforms at 0.07 to 0.15 RMB each, taking about 5,800 orders for some 2.7 million fake follows. Regulators confiscated and fined 270,000 RMB in September 2025. Source: State Administration for Market Regulation (市场监管总局), livestream e-commerce cases, November 2025. https://www.samr.gov.cn/xw/zj/art/2025/art_cb90a1860b3d4cd18c87b1fa35baeeff.html

Douyin punishes the creator too. A creator caught on fake transactions pays a penalty of 1% of the faked amount, at least 1,000 RMB and at most 20,000 RMB, and the worst cases lose product sharing for good.

Douyin charges creators found running fake transactions a penalty of 1% of the fake payment amount, from 1,000 to 20,000 RMB, and can close their product-sharing function permanently. Source: Douyin E-commerce (抖音电商), fake transaction rules, August 2026. https://school.jinritemai.com/doudian/web/articlev0/113470

Xingtu, the sponsored-video side, keeps its own ban list.

Xingtu treats faked follows, likes, comments or conversions as a violation, with penalties up to a ban, and cuts off order-taking for any creator whose main Douyin account shows serious follower fraud. Source: Ocean Engine Xingtu (巨量星图) creator management rules, October 2026. https://www.xingtu.cn/help-center/author/134035

Then there’s the state. On September 30, 2026, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) announced a two-month campaign against fake creator personas.

The CAC’s two-month campaign targets short-video accounts that invent credentials, fake public figures with AI for endorsements and marketing, or mass-produce personas through MCN account matrices. Source: Cyberspace Administration of China (中央网信办), September 2026. https://www.cac.gov.cn/2026-09/30/c_1792520301987752.htm

The check for a brand takes five minutes. Compare views with sales. A creator whose videos draw a million plays and whose page shows almost no settled sales has an audience that doesn’t buy, or one that doesn’t exist.

Pay on commission first, then buy reach

Commission puts the risk on the creator. Douyin pays it only on orders the buyer keeps.

A brand sets creator commission at 5% to 50% of the order on plans open to all creators, and at 5% to 80% on some plans for named creators. Douyin settles it 15 days after the buyer confirms receipt. If an order is refunded within the after-sale period, the commission is cancelled, and commission already settled is clawed back. Source: Douyin E-commerce (抖音电商), affiliate settlement rules, October 2026. https://school.jinritemai.com/doudian/web/articlev0/112620

Run the numbers at scale. Our Douyin cost calculator starts from 2 million RMB of first-year sales, 80% of them through creators, at a 20% commission and a 250 RMB basket. That’s 1.6 million RMB of creator sales and 320,000 RMB of commission, or 50 RMB on each of 6,400 orders (TheChinaPath calculator data, October 2026).

Now set that against a flat fee. One sponsored video at Douyin’s 2024 average of 39,700 RMB costs the same as the commission on 794 of those orders, close to 200,000 RMB of sales (our arithmetic). A flat-fee video has to sell that much before it beats paying on results.

Sponsored creator posts averaged 39,700 RMB each on Douyin and 10,800 RMB on Xiaohongshu from January to October 2024. Source: Jiemian (界面新闻), citing QuestMobile, March 2025. https://www.jiemian.com/article/12440261.html

Flat fees still have a job. A creator with no selling record but the right audience can be tested cheaply on Xingtu, where a recruitment task opens at 10,000 RMB.

Xingtu recruitment tasks start at a 10,000 RMB budget, with a 5% platform service fee, for creators with 1,000 to 5 million followers. Source: Ocean Engine Xingtu (巨量星图) help center, August 2026. https://www.xingtu.cn/help-center/demander/126583

On Xiaohongshu, the brand pays the creator’s price plus 10%.

On Xiaohongshu’s Pugongying (蒲公英) platform, a custom creator deal costs the creator’s flat price plus a 10% platform service fee: 11,000 RMB on a 10,000 RMB quote. Source: Xiaohongshu Pugongying help center, October 2026. https://pgy.xiaohongshu.com/api/pgy/help/doc?shortcutId=eb3150fa550d424459f8838a77c7e433&role=4

A commission deal needs a Douyin store for the creator to link to. For a foreign brand that usually means a Douyin Global store, often run by a Douyin Partner, and our Douyin Partner finder lists what to check in one. Seeding, where the job is awareness rather than orders, belongs to TheRedScroll, the group’s China social media agency.

What Chinese law puts on the brand

This is the part the 2023 page skipped. In China, a brand that sells through a livestream is the advertiser in the eyes of the law, and the creator who vouches for the product is its endorser.

A seller that promotes goods through a livestream that amounts to a commercial ad bears the advertiser’s duties; a host who recommends goods in their own name bears the endorser’s duties. Source: State Administration for Market Regulation (市场监管总局), Internet Advertising Measures, Order No. 72, February 2023. https://www.gov.cn/gongbao/2023/issue_10506/202306/content_6885261.html

The endorser’s duties come from the Advertising Law. A creator may only vouch for goods they’ve used. For goods that bear on health, the creator shares liability for a false ad whether or not they knew it was false, and the brand that hired them is on the hook as the advertiser.

An endorser may not recommend goods it has not used or services it has not received. For false ads of goods or services bearing on consumers’ life and health that cause harm, the endorser is jointly liable with the advertiser. Source: State Administration for Market Regulation (市场监管总局), Advertising Law, articles 38 and 56, as amended April 2021. https://www.samr.gov.cn/zw/zfxxgk/fdzdgknr/fgs/art/2023/art_5474cf75173c45d6a0379730fb4e8d97.html

And regulators fine the brand. In 2025 it cost one seller of a health food 100,000 RMB.

A trading company in Dongying hired a host who claimed on a February 2025 livestream that its health food had sold 21.85 million orders and that anyone over 14 could take it. Regulators fined the company 100,000 RMB in August 2025. Source: State Administration for Market Regulation (市场监管总局), livestream e-commerce cases, November 2025. https://www.samr.gov.cn/xw/zj/art/2025/art_cb90a1860b3d4cd18c87b1fa35baeeff.html

Since February 1, 2026, whoever runs a live room also has to check the host. That’s the brand when the brand runs its own room.

A live-room operator must verify each host’s name, ID, address, agency and relevant qualifications, report the verified details to the platform before every stream and keep the records for at least three years. An operator that fails the checks and doesn’t correct them faces a fine of 10,000 to 100,000 RMB. Source: Cyberspace Administration of China (国家网信办), Livestream E-commerce Supervision Measures, SAMR and CAC Order No. 117, January 2026. https://www.cac.gov.cn/2026-01/07/c_1769516655383334.htm

Disclosure is the other line. A review or “experience” post that carries a buy link has to say 广告 (advertisement), in plain view.

Goods promoted through knowledge sharing, experience sharing or consumer reviews with a shopping link attached must be clearly labelled “advertisement”. Source: State Administration for Market Regulation (市场监管总局), Internet Advertising Measures, Order No. 72, article 9, February 2023. https://www.gov.cn/gongbao/2023/issue_10506/202306/content_6885261.html

Xiaohongshu enforces its own version. Since January 12, 2026, it has cracked down on creator deals that skip Pugongying, limiting the notes and, for repeat cases, the brand’s own accounts.

From January 12, 2026, Xiaohongshu targets KOC and KOL deals taken outside the official partnership platform without being reported, with penalties from limiting the notes’ reach to restricting the brand account’s posting and exposure for repeat cases. Source: Xiaohongshu Pugongying help center, brand trust notice, August 2026. https://pgy.xiaohongshu.com/api/pgy/help/doc?shortcutId=1627df51a4c861f13e462aa2067d6c15&role=4

So the creator contract carries a few lines most templates leave out:

• The creator confirms in writing that they have used the product.
• Every claim about efficacy, sales or rankings comes from a list the brand approved, with the evidence on file.
• Posts with a buy link carry the 广告 label, and Xiaohongshu deals go through Pugongying.
• Commission follows Douyin’s settlement, so refunds come off.
• Fake data ends the contract, and the creator repays what they earned.

Put them in before the first sample ships. Renegotiating after a fine is harder.

FAQ

How much does an influencer cost in China?

On commission, nothing up front: Douyin creators take 5% to 50% of each kept order on open plans. Flat-fee posts averaged 39,700 RMB on Douyin and 10,800 RMB on Xiaohongshu in 2024, according to QuestMobile data, before Xiaohongshu’s 10% service fee. A test task on Xingtu starts at 10,000 RMB.

Do follower counts matter at all?

They measure reach. During Douyin’s 618 festival in 2026, creators with fewer than 1 million followers drove more than 80% of creator sales. Douyin’s own creator levels run on settled sales after refunds, which is the better number to shortlist on.

Who is liable if a creator makes a false claim?

Both of you, often. The seller behind a livestream ad carries the advertiser’s duties, and the creator carries the endorser’s. For health products, the creator is jointly liable even without knowing the claim was false. Chinese regulators fined one brand 100,000 RMB in 2025 for what its host said on air.

How fast can we tell whether a creator works?

Within a month. Douyin settles commission 15 days after the buyer confirms receipt and claws back refunds, so the kept-order count firms up a couple of weeks after the stream.

Plan a commission-first creator program with our social commerce team