Source: Global Times
On April 20, the South China Morning Post of Hong Kong published an article titled "French fall in love with Chinese e-commerce platform discounts and seek 'Taobao代购' delivery to their doorsteps." Sarah, a 19-year-old French student, made her first purchase on Taobao at the end of last month and was pleasantly surprised. "Like many others, I discovered Taobao on TikTok. There are many videos where people show off luxury-looking handbags they bought at very low prices." For her, the price was indeed very low: a total of 35 euros (1 euro is approximately 8.4 yuan RMB), the handbag cost only 10 euros, with shipping and handling fees totaling 25 euros. The goods arrived at her doorstep in Dijon, France within a week. "Considering the quality of this bag and the delivery speed, I think it's worth it," she said.
In the context of escalating trade tensions between Beijing and Washington, many accounts on TikTok have been showing users how to directly purchase low-priced goods from Chinese factories to avoid markups and tariffs. This quickly led to popular searches such as "Made-in-China Hermes" and "Chinese揭秘 Luxury Brands" on French TikTok. Despite not being the core audience for English content on TikTok, French users flocked to Chinese e-commerce platforms. On April 15, Taobao ranked 23rd in downloads on the French Apple Store, coming in second; it soared 131 places to fifth in Germany. Another Chinese e-commerce platform, DHgate, climbed to fifth place in France and fourth in Germany.
"How to order on Taobao" and "How to set Taobao to French" became hot topics on French TikTok. However, language barriers and logistical restrictions are two major challenges for French consumers. Therefore, after Sarah shared her Taobao shopping experience and received 60,000 likes, the comment section spontaneously formed a mutual aid community to address these issues. A clearly more experienced user replied, "You need to find a '代购' in China to place the order for you, then forward it to you." Google Trends data shows that searches for "Taobao代购" in France skyrocketed from 0 on April 11 to 100 on April 15.
The popularity of Taobao and the trend of "direct purchasing from China" highlight that some French people's impressions of Chinese products are gradually shifting from "cheap" to "good value for money." After watching videos about product manufacturing and testing, Sarah noted that people's attitudes toward buying Chinese products are changing, "We found that the quality of Chinese products is good, the styles are fashionable, and they can rival big brands but are much cheaper."
Bernard, aged 32, fell in love with Chinese shopping platforms because of the variety of household items available, "You can spend hours looking at different things and be amazed by the range of choices." Some people still doubt the quality of Chinese products, to which Bernard frankly admitted, "The problem lies in people's lack of understanding. Many of the things we buy are made in China and are excellent; they just don't know about it." (By Xiaofei Xu, translated by Liu Changhuang)
Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7495897850186940968/
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