Hello everyone,
I'm a guy from Mainland China and have been a huge fan of female WG/stuffing for about nine years. I saw your question and thought I could offer a first-hand perspective.
First off, to the people who share content on boards like this one, you guys are absolute heroes. My personal collection of nearly 20,000 anime-style images and 2,000 real-life videos wouldn't exist without communities like this. So, thank you.
You asked: "How do people into this stuff even find each other?"
In China, it's incredibly difficult. For a long time, the only real place was a forum on Baidu Tieba (think of it as China's Reddit) called "异梦阁吧" (Yimengge Ba). This was our main hub for stuffing-related content. There's another one called "肥满化吧" (Feimanhua Ba), but it includes male WG, which isn't my interest.
At its peak, "Yimengge Ba" was a thriving community. People shared stuffing videos through Baidu Pan (our cloud service), and there was a ton of fan fiction and art being created and shared.
But now? It's a shadow of its former self. A few female users might post pictures of their belly after a big meal, but they get very few replies. The censorship is brutal. Whether you're sharing WG art from Japan or Europe, or even writing an original story, it's extremely likely to get deleted by the system, often before it's even successfully posted. To make matters worse, some shameless scalpers will collect free art from outside China and then try to sell it here at ridiculous prices, like 10 RMB (about $1.50) for a single comic page.
The Stigma and Social Context
Yes, this fetish is heavily stigmatized here. The public perception of larger women in China is also complicated by online discourse. There's a prevalent and negative stereotype that often associates overweight women with aggressive, anti-male rhetoric, which has unfortunately damaged the reputation of plus-sized women in general. This makes it much harder for a genuine appreciation of the BBW aesthetic to be accepted.
A great recent example is the character Bready from the game Goddess of Victory: Nikke. I know you guys in the West pushed her to the #1 popularity spot, which was awesome to see. Here in China, however, the reaction was mostly confusion and ridicule. Things are slowly getting better, but among both mainstream and even niche ACG (Anime, Comic, Game) subcultures, BBW is still far from an acceptable fetish.
The Community Today
The community size is tiny. Most communication happens in private QQ groups (our version of Discord/Messenger), but these groups are constantly at risk of being shut down by censors. Just surviving is a daily struggle.
On Bilibili (our YouTube), a few fans might upload BBW-related anime art or stuffing clips, but their accounts are always in danger. Even if a video survives, it might only get a few thousand views, with maybe a handful of fellow fans in the comments. On Xiaohongshu (our Instagram), some women use the #BBW tag, but almost none are actual BBWs, and very few even show their bellies.
There are virtually no dedicated content creators (models/feedees) here, so a full "ecosystem" like you might have in the West just doesn't exist.
To put it in terms you might understand: being a fan of this in China feels like being a citizen of Paradis Island in Attack on Titan. Once you realize you're living in a barren, isolated land, getting a VPN and joining the "Survey Corps" to see the outside world becomes a necessity.
A Few Interesting Quirks
1. Memes as a Shield: There's a controversial, very large male mukbanger in China named "大胃袋良子" (Da Wei Dai Liang Zi). He's become a source of many memes about eating. Some fans here cleverly use his memes as a "cover" to post fetish content, hoping the censors just see it as a joke and not a fetish. Sometimes it works.
2. The Silent Searchers: This is fascinating. On Baidu (our Google), if you type "anime girl," "girl drinking water," or "girl eating," one of the very first auto-complete suggestions is "撑大肚子" (chēng dà dùzi - "stuffed-big belly"). This proves there's a huge silent majority of fans who don't know the international terms like "stuffing," so they just search for what their instincts tell them. Of course, their search results come up empty.
3. The Blind Censor AI: Baidu Pan, our cloud storage, is notoriously aggressive at deleting AV (porn). It's almost instant. And yet, of the 2,000+ real-life BBW videos I've uploaded, fewer than 30 have ever been deleted. Some of these videos feature fully nude women eating until their bellies are massive and even masturbating afterwards, but the AI censor seems completely blind to it. My guess is that because the act of eating is so "everyday" and often lacks direct sexual intercourse, it doesn't trigger the algorithm.
Like me, the vast majority of fans here are also ACGN lovers. The medium allows for the kind of exaggeration we love, like a belly big enough to fill a room. We would never reveal this interest in our daily lives. Doing so would be equivalent to "social suicide." We all instinctively know to keep this part of ourselves online.
Anyway, that's the situation. This is my first time really communicating with fans from overseas. It's truly wonderful to see how much the BBW community is thriving in the West!