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China
The 1990s saw the rise of K-pop in China through groups like H.O.T. and SechKies—sparking China’s investment in Korea’s entertainment industry. K-pop artists have achieved considerable success in China since then: in 2005, Rain held a concert in Beijing with 40,000 people in attendance. In 2010, the Wonder Girls won an award for the highest digital sales for a foreign artist, with 5 million digital downloads, in the 5th annual China Mobile Wireless Music Awards. Most recently, China has become the South Korean entertainment industry’s biggest market for exports. Twelve percent of SM Entertainment’s sales in 2015 went to China, and this number rose to 14.4 percent by the middle of 2016. China has found that K-pop is a profitable investment. According to Director of Communication for the Korea Economic Institute of America Jenna Gibson, sales for a certain shampoo brand rose by 630% after Super Junior endorsed it on a Chinese reality show. K-pop’s popularity has also led China’s e-commerce company Alibaba to buy roughly $30 million worth of SM Entertainment’s shares in 2016 in order to help its expansion into the online music industry. Legend Capital China has also invested in BTS’ label BigHit Entertainment. As of the beginning of 2017, China took up around 8-20 percent of major Korean entertainment companies’ total sales. Chinese entertainment companies have also claimed stakes in the industry, partially overseeing groups like EXID and T-ara or representing groups like UNIQ and WJSN, which include both Chinese and Korean members

Having Chinese members in K-pop groups is one way Korean entertainment companies make K-pop more marketable and appealing in China. Other strategies include giving Korean members Chinese-sounding names, releasing songs or whole albums in Chinese, and making subgroups with members that predominantly speak Mandarin —like S.M. Entertainment's EXO-M and Super Junior-M, which has had successful results on the Kuang Nan Record and CCR. The K-pop industry’s methods of producing idols have influenced Chinese entertainment companies’ practices. These Chinese companies aim to reproduce K-pop idols’ success with their own stars so that Chinese entertainers can compete better globally. To achieve this, Chinese entertainment companies have recruited K-pop industry experts, and some of these insiders have actively started moving into the Chinese music industry to capitalize on K-pop’s increasing influence on market demands. Chinese reality show Idol Producer further highlights K-pop’s impact on China’s entertainment scene: closely mirroring Korea’s Produce 101. A number of Chinese K-pop idols, such as Super Junior-M’s Han Geng and EXO-M’s Kris, Luhan, and Tao, have left their respective K-pop groups in order to pursue solo careers in China. However, lately, Korean entertainment companies have allowed their Chinese K-pop idols more freedom in pursuing solo work in China. Therefore, GOT7’s Jackson Wang, for example, has released several of his own songs in China and, in 2017, reached number one on Chinese music charts.

Additionally, the rise of K-pop has led to an increase in the number of Chinese tourists in South Korea—3.8 million more Chinese toured South Korea in 2016 than 2015 according to the Union of International Associations. K-pop has also made China’s youth find South Korean culture "cool", and K-pop has helped facilitate greater understanding between Korea and China.