China

Urban younger listeners spread their time across long-running headliners like Jay Chou and Hua Chenyu, idol acts, anime tie-ins and a thick indie scene that lives mostly on NetEase. Teen and twenty-something women lean toward boy-idol groups in the TFBoys / Times Youth League lineage, while a male skew runs toward Chinese hip-hop, with Higher Brothers as the original breakout reference. Older listeners in smaller cities tend to stick with classic Mandarin pop, Teresa Teng (Deng Lijun) reissues and red-song repertoire. K-pop reaches China mostly through unofficial channels because Korean acts have limited approval to release domestically.