Source: China Media Project (5/13/25)
Plucking China’s “Peach Networks”
A state television exposé last month claimed to unmask exploitative dating apps, but it also exposed how cyclical media campaigns serve official narratives in China’s tightly controlled information landscape.
By Dalia Parete
Perhaps you’ve never heard of “peach networks.” But this term, which refers to shadowy dating apps allegedly facilitating illegal prostitution, trended briefly in China late last month when the country’s state broadcaster ran a consumer investigation of what it characterized as a growing phenomenon — dating apps that cross the line into sexual exploitation.
The phrase “peach networks,” or taose shejiao (桃色社交), first appeared on April 20, featured in an episode of “Finance Investigation” (财经调查), a program released on China Central Television in March 2024 that runs documentary-style investigations into consumer issues, business misconduct, and market violations. Such soft targets — not dealing, at least directly, with government negligence or corruption — fall into a shrinking area of permitted coverage in a media industry that has been heavily restrained over the past decade.
In this case, the report alleged that apps it referred to as “peach networks” were disguising themselves as legitimate social networking sites while engaging in illegal activities. On some of these platforms, men were permitted to sign up without any identity verification, while women were put through intensive identity checks. Once registered, male users were bombarded with messages from female profiles, and prompted to purchase virtual currency to reply. According to the CCTV program’s investigation, many of the initial interactions for which men spent their credits were in fact with automated chatbots rather than real women, the process engineered to draw chiefly male users deeper into the platform to pay more money.
In the Chinese language, the term “peach-colored,” or taose (桃色), has historically denoted sexual or erotic themes — the peach fruit, owing to its curvy shape and soft pink color, being likened to the human body. When paired with “social networking,” or shejiao (社交), the result is a composite phrase suggesting the apps in question provide sexual services or content, which in China is tightly controlled. Continue reading Peach networks