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| Dating apps have a new way to play in China: making friends |
Shanghai-based photography assistant Qu Tongzhou embarked on a long-awaited trip to western China in June and found that the cities she visited were not very welcoming to her. Due to the impact of China's "zero-out" policy, locals are skeptical of tourists, and some hotels refused to check in Qu Tongzhou, fearing that she would bring the virus in.
Qu Tongzhou had to turn to Tantan and Jimu , two popular dating apps in China , which function similarly to Tinder. She knows that meeting strangers is risky, but the software has brought her a host of new friends, including a biotech entrepreneur in Lanzhou, a Tibetan doctor in Xining and a civil servant in Karamay, a city in northwestern Xinjiang. . At each stop, the friends she made offered her accommodation and took her to local bars and other places.
"If I don't use the software, there might be no one to play with me," said 28-year-old Qu Tongzhou. "No one takes me to play."
Over the past two years, China has cracked down on much of its domestic technology sector, banned for-profit online tutoring services, restricted online gaming and imposed tens of billions of dollars in antitrust fines on the largest online shopping platform. Some of China's once-touted tech giants, such as Jack Ma, the founder of e-commerce group Alibaba, have retreated from the public eye.
But one corner of China's tech industry is still thriving: dating apps.
The number of dating apps in China with more than 1,000 downloads has soared from 81 in 2017 to 275 this year, according to analytics firm data.ai. In addition to downloads, in-app purchases for these software have also grown.
Investors poured the equivalent of more than $5.3 billion into Chinese dating apps and social networking companies last year, up from $300 million in 2019, according to PitchBook data. China's biggest tech companies, including ByteDance and Tencent, are testing, acquiring and investing in new apps that promise to make strangers meet.
These apps are booming, and the Chinese government seems to be ignoring them for more than just love. In addition to promising to bring people into marriage at a time when China's marriage and birth rates are at an all-time low, the apps are also helping users ease loneliness at a time when China's coronavirus lockdowns are wreaking havoc on social interactions.
For many users, the software has become a virtual sanctuary, a 21st-century variant of what urbanists call a "third place" (the neighborhood between work and home), allowing people to explore interests , Discuss hot topics, meet new friends.
"It's really difficult to meet people offline," said Rafael Zhao, 25, who recently graduated from a university in Beijing. In April, after Rafael Zhao's school locked down the campus under a "zero-out" policy, he downloaded Tantan. "Because the pool of dating software is too large, it will give people a sense of hope, and feel that there is always a certain probability to meet someone who matches them."
Chinese authorities have taken action against dating apps in the past. In 2019, Tantan and another platform, Momo, suspended some in-app features after regulators accused them of allowing users to spread pornography on their platforms.
But unlike online tutoring and cryptocurrency trading, which Chinese regulators have explicitly banned, dating and other social-focused services are far less regulated because the platforms clearly position themselves to help Chinese society prosper.
“Loneliness is the core problem we want to solve,” said Zhang Lu, founder of Tencent-backed dating app Soul . Blued, China’s most popular gay social app, bills itself as a public health and HIV awareness app . Its website highlights HIV prevention work, partnerships with local governments, and scenes of software founders being interviewed by top officials, including Premier Li Keqiang. (Blued’s founder resigned last month, in an indirect indication of the challenges of running an LGBTQ app in China, but the software’s downloads have been steady.)
“The government sees dating apps as a technology that can be used effectively by the state, rather than simply cracking down on them,” said Zhou Yun, an assistant professor of sociology and China studies at the University of Michigan.
In China, where matchmakers, parents and factory owners in the countryside once wielded a great deal of the power to form intimate relationships, since online dating platforms entered the country in the early 2000s, that control has increasingly fallen into the hands of individuals. Eager for the change, many have flocked to WeChat, the popular messaging app, to use the platform's features that let them chat with strangers.
This trend accelerated in the 2010s with the emergence of dating apps that mimic Tinder, such as Momo and Tantan. Together, Momo, Tantan and Soul are the three most popular dating apps in China, with more than 150 million monthly active users combined.
Soul and Momo declined to comment for this article. Tantan, which is owned by Momo, also did not respond to a request for comment.
The dating apps themselves have also changed. Tantan and Momo have long matched users based on their physical appearance, leading to criticism of the two platforms for fostering a hook-up culture. More recently, these software have begun to use people's interests, hobbies and personalities as the basis for building new social networks.
ByteDance’s Douyin and the Instagram-like app Xiaohongshu both have a “social discovery” feature that matches users based on what the platforms know about their preferences. Soul has become particularly popular over the past few years because of its user profiles with avatars and the ability to match users based on personality test results. Last year, Soul became the most downloaded dating app in China's Apple App Store, surpassing Tantan and Momo.
“What I like most about Soul is that it doesn’t just come and ask you to look at photos and swipe left and right,” said Yang Zhuoluo, 23, a graduate student in Beijing. She met some friends on this platform. "You can post something, share some thoughts, and then people can like and comment."
Soul's monthly active users tripled from 2019 to 2021, reaching 31 million. In July, Soul filed for an initial public offering in Hong Kong. According to its prospectus, three quarters of the platform's users were born between 1990 and 2009. (The company had applied to list in the U.S. in 2021, but has since dropped the plan.)
Many users of these dating apps seem more interested in meeting friends than romance. In an October survey by a Chinese research institute , 89 percent of respondents said they had used dating apps, with the majority saying they mainly wanted to expand their social circle rather than find a partner.
Shanghai-based software developer Vladimir Peters is working on his own dating app. Many young Chinese now want the apps to offer a more holistic experience that combines entertainment and exploration rather than just dating, he said.
"Young Chinese like games that energize the atmosphere and other fun things that can be a starting point for communication," Peters said.
Many of the big Chinese technology companies that make social platforms and dating apps appear to have come to the same conclusion. Tencent, the owner of WeChat, has released 10 social networking and dating apps over the past few years. Tencent is developing a social product for a multiplayer game in which users can simulate a party experience without having to attend an actual party.
Gaming company NetEase has also developed a dating app that recommends partners based on people's common interests. In March, Douyin owner ByteDance acquired Bozi, a start-up that uses virtual reality to enhance social networking.
Qu Tongzhou used to place great importance on meeting offline and on the appearance of the other party on dating apps, but she said that during the lockdown in Shanghai in April this year, she began to cherish the matches that dating apps found for her more, treating them as digital companionship in society.
“(During the lockdown), you really just have to settle down and (have) a spiritual exchange,” she said. "It's very valuable for you to have someone who can talk to you."
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