One of the fastest-growing consumer categories in China is one most foreign brands have never heard of. The “guzi economy,” the market for physical merchandise based on anime, comics, games, and novel IP, reached 168.9 billion RMB, up more than 40% in a single year. Guzi, a phonetic play on the English word “goods,” covers badges, acrylic stands, plush toys, art cards, figures, and every other collectible tied to a beloved character or story. It is driven almost entirely by Gen Z, it is deeply emotional, and it is expanding while many traditional retail categories flatten. If your brand has any IP, characters, or licensing potential, this is a market worth understanding.
What Is the Guzi Economy
Guzi are merchandise items tied to an intellectual property: a character from an anime, a game, a webcomic, or a novel. The emotional mechanism is what makes it powerful. A young consumer who loves a character does not just watch or play, they want to own a piece of that world, display it, wear it, trade it, and share it with others who feel the same. A small acrylic figure that costs a few RMB to produce can sell for many times that, not because of the plastic but because of the emotional attachment to the character it represents. This is consumption as identity and belonging, not as utility.
The category sits inside a larger shift Chinese analysts call the “emotional economy,” where consumers increasingly pay for feelings, experiences, and self-expression rather than pure function. China’s emotional economy is measured in the trillions of RMB and forecast to keep growing, and guzi is its most visible, fastest-moving expression among the young.
Why It Is Growing So Fast
Gen Z spends on emotion, not utility
China’s post-00s consumers grew up materially comfortable and prioritise emotional value and self-expression in ways their parents did not. They are willing to spend meaningful money on things that carry no practical use but strong personal meaning. Guzi delivers exactly that, and it fits a generation that expresses identity through the fictional worlds it belongs to.
Collecting, trading, and community
Guzi is social. Collections are displayed, rare items are traded, and whole communities form around specific IPs on Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, and dedicated apps. The trading and scarcity dynamic, blind boxes, limited editions, and collaboration drops, creates repeat purchase and genuine excitement. The blind box model pioneered by Pop Mart, where you do not know which figure you will get until you open it, turned collecting into a recurring thrill and built one of China’s most valuable consumer companies.
Domestic IP is rising
While Japanese anime IP still anchors much of the market, Chinese domestic IP, from homegrown games, animations, and webcomics, is growing quickly, supported by cultural policy and national pride among young consumers. This creates licensing and collaboration opportunities that did not exist a few years ago.
What This Means for Foreign Brands
You do not need to be an entertainment company to benefit from the guzi economy. The lesson generalises. First, if your brand owns any characters, mascots, or IP, China’s young consumers may value merchandise built around them far more than you expect, and licensing or collaboration with an established Chinese IP can attach your brand to an existing emotional following. Consumer brands across food, beverage, beauty, and apparel routinely run IP collaborations in China, a limited-edition product wrapped in a beloved character, precisely because it borrows that emotional pull and drives a purchase spike.
Second, the deeper lesson is about emotional value itself. The guzi boom is proof that Chinese young consumers will pay a premium for meaning, belonging, and self-expression. A brand that gives its product an emotional and identity dimension, through story, collectibility, community, or scarcity, reaches this consumer more effectively than one that competes only on features and price. The blind box mechanic, the limited drop, the collectible series, and the community-building around a product are tools any brand can adapt.
How to Approach It
- Consider an IP collaboration. Partnering with an established Chinese or Japanese IP for a limited product line borrows an existing emotional following and is a proven way to reach Gen Z fast.
- Build collectibility into products. Series, limited editions, and blind-box mechanics turn a single purchase into a collecting habit. Even non-toy categories can add a collectible dimension.
- Sell through the right platforms. Xiaohongshu and Bilibili are where IP communities live and where guzi discovery and discussion happen. Douyin drives the impulse and the drops.
- Respect the community. These consumers spot inauthentic, cash-grab IP use instantly. A collaboration that shows genuine understanding of the IP and its fans succeeds; one that treats the character as a sticker fails.
The Bigger Picture
The guzi economy is a signal about where Chinese consumption is heading. As basic material needs are met, spending shifts toward emotion, identity, and experience. The brands that grow with China’s young consumers are the ones that understand they are not just selling a product, they are selling a feeling and a sense of belonging. Guzi is the purest current example, a 169 billion RMB market built on love for fictional characters, but the principle applies far beyond collectibles. Emotional value is the growth engine, and foreign brands that learn to speak to it will find a young Chinese consumer far more willing to spend than the price-driven stereotype suggests.
The Pop Mart Blueprint
No company illustrates the emotional economy better than Pop Mart, the Chinese toy company that built a multi-billion-dollar business on blind boxes and character IP. Its success was not about the toys themselves, which are inexpensive to make, but about the mechanics wrapped around them: original characters with strong personalities, a blind-box format that turns each purchase into a moment of suspense, limited editions that create scarcity and resale value, and a community of collectors who trade, display, and evangelise. Pop Mart proved that Chinese young consumers will queue, pay premiums, and return repeatedly for products whose value is almost entirely emotional.
The blueprint is portable. A food brand can release a collectible series across its packaging. A beauty brand can build an original character for its youth line. An apparel brand can run limited character drops. The specific tactics, blind boxes, limited editions, original IP, collector community, can be adapted to almost any category. What cannot be faked is genuine investment in the character and the community. Chinese Gen Z consumers reward brands that build real emotional worlds and punish those that slap a mascot on a product and expect the magic to follow. The guzi economy is not a licensing trick, it is a discipline of building things people feel attached to.
Sources: CSSN and People’s Daily emotional economy coverage 2026; China guzi and IP merchandise market reports 2025-2026; EAC Ecommerce China Agency consumer trend analysis
Harry Huang, Founder of EAC Ecommerce China Agency. Harry founded EAC to help foreign brands sell in China without the guesswork. Before EAC he worked on digital and ecommerce projects at Volkswagen in China, combining multinational reporting discipline with a practical grasp of how Chinese platforms convert traffic into sales. EAC is an independent agency running Tmall, JD.com, and Douyin stores for foreign brands, with one metric in mind: revenue per RMB spent.
Want to reach China’s Gen Z through IP and emotional value? Get a free audit from our team. Connect with Harry Huang: ecommercechinaagency.com/author/philip/
