YouTube is not officially available in China, but that’s not stopping YouTube’s biggest star from establishing himself in the Chinese market. MrBeast (real name Jimmy Donaldson) received millions of views on his first BiliBili upload after joining the social video service on January 22.
On his BiliBili account, Donaldson will share the big-budget spectacles that regularly reel in hundreds of millions of views on YouTube. To kick things off, the man known as MrBeast introduced himself to Chinese viewers and prompted them to “subscribe for a dumpling.”
Donaldson is making a play for Chinese viewership in partnership with Eyal Baumel and Yoola. Baumel, who is known for working with creators like Rebecca Zamolo and Nastya Radzinskaya, is the former President of Yoola and an expert in content globalization. He has discussed localization at events like VidSummit, which counts MrBeast as one of its owners). He is now helping Donaldson take advantage of a “unique opportunity” in China, where platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok are not publicly available (but are accessed by many VPN users).
“I’ve been making videos my entire life, and now we are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on content,” Donaldson said in a statement. “The crazy part is that none of my content is currently in China, so I’m really excited to bring this over there. An average video for us right now is getting 200 million views in other languages because the content we create is content that anyone, no matter where you are, no matter what your culture is, you can enjoy.”
The success of Donaldson’s first BiliBili upload suggests that MrBeast is already a household name in China. Less than a day after its premiere, the welcome video has received more than three million views and upwards of 20,000 comments. Thanks to those numbers, the clip became the #1 trending video on BiliBili.
Donaldson is no stranger to localization. He has worked closely with YouTube to develop a multi-language dubbing tool that can automatically translate videos into 40 different tongues.
The star of the MrBeast channel has also sought new avenues for distribution in his home country. He recently tested his potential ad earnings on X by uploading a video to the platform formerly known as Twitter. He made $250,000 from that experiment, though he also admitted that the results may have been skewed by intense media coverage. (Sorry, Jimmy.)
