On 22 January it was reported that Douyin Group, a subsidy of ByteDance, owner of both TikTok and its Chinese sister app Douyin, is planning to build a hospital in Beijing, China. On Weibo, China’s Twitter equivalent, the topic “Douyin Group will build a tertiary hospital” ranked number 24 on the Hot Search list with 17.07 million views.
The report began when the Beijing Municipal Health Commission released a document on its website which shows that it had approved an application from Douyin Group to set up a hospital in Chaoyang district, called Beijing Arion Hospital (北京爱瑞医院) with a “tbc” at the end of the name. The document shows that it will be a for-profit comprehensive tertiary hospital with over 800 beds. It will also be a joint venture with foreign investors, according to the published registration.
It is not the first time ByteDance has invested in healthcare or in hospitals. The company’s venture in healthcare began in 2020 after acquiring a popular medical website Baikemy.com before launching its own healthcare service app Xiaohe. Through Xiaohe, ByteDance acquired the Amcare Women’s and Children’s Hospital, a high-end private healthcare provider. It acquired several other establishments before launching livestream e-commerce sales on Douyin. In fact, there has also been unconfirmed reports from “sources close to the matter” that the application was not for a new hospital but an expansion of existing Amcare facilities.
The online healthcare market in China is projected to reach 494.3 billion RMB (67.82 billion USD) in 2025. Facing competition from the likes of Baidu, JD.com and Alibaba, Douyin has yet to convert enough traffic to sales or Xiaohe users. Pundits believe that should Douyin expand its offline healthcare presence by building a new hospital or other means, how to profit might be the key question for the social media giant.
