In this episode of Chat With Sean, I’m joined by international SEO consultant Natalia Witczyk, who recently spent time working directly inside China’s digital ecosystem. Natalia shares what it’s really like to live in a world where super-apps replace websites, payments are entirely mobile, and AI is built directly into devices rather than bolted on as an add-on. Her on-the-ground perspective reveals a technology landscape that has evolved differently and in many ways faster than anything we experience in the West.

We explore how China skipped the PC era, why WeChat functions like a national operating system, how search behaviour differs on Baidu, and why DeepSeek has become the AI model of choice for hundreds of millions of users. Natalia also breaks down the cultural, structural and economic factors that shape discovery, user expectations, content formats and marketing strategy — and what China’s trajectory signals about the future of search, AI and platform fragmentation globally.

We cover:

- How mobile-first culture transformed daily life, payments and commerce

- The role of WeChat as a super-app powering messaging, search, payments and mini-programs

- Why user journeys in China are far more fragmented than in the West- Key differences between Baidu and Google — and what SEO looks like in China

- How DeepSeek powers AI features across multiple platforms

- The limits of Western platforms (Google, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Wikipedia) inside China

- How offline and online blend through QR-driven discovery and attribution

- Why cognitive overload shapes Chinese consumer behaviour

- China’s social platform landscape: TikTok/Douyin and rural-first apps

- AI at device level: AI-native smartphones, interfaces and embedded features

- Robotics adoption and how ageing demographics accelerate automation

- Why Western brands often fail when entering China — and how to localise effectively

- What China teaches us about the future of search, content and platform ecosystems

-The rising cost of paid search and the need for hyper-precise targeting