We examined 600 top-performing WeChat articles from September periods across 2023, 2024, and 2025, weighted by engagement metrics. Some of the trends we unveil show significant shifts in the cultural and marketing landscape.
Users’ attention is shifting from politics to finance, with a rising discussion about the environment
Top category by article amount:
Top category by like amount:
Weighted as % of total content.
The Historical Content Explosion
Astronomical rise of historical content, surging from a negligible 0.93% in 2023 to a commanding 22.09% in 2025. This 23X increase represents the single largest categorical transformation in WeChat’s content ecosystem, fundamentally altering the platform’s information architecture.
Some of the top liked articles are strongly politically influenced: “Never Forget September 18!” (68k likes), “1931918” (28k likes), and “People Who Refuse to Be Slaves” (14k likes).
These are backward-looking nostalgia pieces that strategically deploy historical narrative to reinforce contemporary national identity.
The political narratives are increasingly embedded within historical (22.09%) and nationalist frameworks (23.20%) rather than explicit political categorization. “Original | 57 Countries Outraged! US Condones Israel’s Bombing While China Wins Hearts of 100 Countries!” (15k likes).
Financial Content as Chinese Stock Creating Gold Rush Waves
Finance-related content experienced remarkable growth, quadrupling from 3.19% to 14.01% over the 3 years. Indicating growing economic optimism or at least pragmatic engagement with market realities.
Entertainment content’s catastrophic decline from 13.65% in 2023 to merely 3.29% in 2025. WeChat seems to be transforming from a social entertainment platform to a serious social information platform.
Other trends
Emerging Categories (2025)
Several categories appeared in the 2025 data:
- Writing: 2.96%
- Marketing: 2.25%
- Relationships: 1.61%
- Career: 1.48%
Sentiment is returning to correction and stabilization
2024 has heightened negativity and suppressed positivity, with 2025 showing signs of rebalancing. The recovery in positive sentiment, while still below 2023 levels, indicates growing confidence among content creators to express optimistic viewpoints within established narrative boundaries.
Emotion Goes Towards Directive
WeChat’s emotional landscape has undergone a remarkable transformation between 2023 and 2025, shifting from a diverse range of emotional expressions toward a more controlled, warning-oriented communication framework.
Dominating: Warning + Strategic + Dramatic
Declining: Critical + Progressive + Entertaining
Emerging knowledge framework: Educational + Historical + Financial
Explosive growth of “Warning” content, surging from 14.15% in 2023 to an unprecedented 22.90% in 2025. This represents the single largest emotional category by 2025, fundamentally redefining the platform’s communicative tone. This warning dominance, combined with the historical content explosion (22.09%), suggests top-performing content is increasingly focused on nostalgia that inspires nationalism.
What dominates the top shared articles are negative sentiment international news, strong and increasing nationalism (up by 11 BP), and psychology-related topics.
A striking transformation is the dramatic rise in nationalism-related content, nearly doubling from 12.10% in 2023 to 23.20% in 2025. Accompanying this nationalist surge is a parallel rise in “Warning” emotional categorization, climbing from 14.15% to 22.90%. This correlation suggests content creators are adopting increasingly protective and defensive narrative frameworks, potentially reflecting broader geopolitical tensions and domestic policy priorities.
Tech innovation-related content plummeted from 5.35% (2023) to 1.61% (2024) before a partial recovery to 3.89% (2025). This decline during the global AI revolution indicates concerns about the recent lack of nationwide tech achievements.
Conclusion
The 3-year dataset shows substantial content interest shift on WeChat, with historical and financial content emerging as dominant categories while entertainment and technology content declined significantly. Emotional framing shifted toward warning and dramatic content, while sentiment data showed volatility in 2024, followed by partial stabilization in 2025.