2021 China Virtual Idol Industry Development and Research Report (2021中国虚拟偶像行业发展及网民调查研究报告) is a 27-page industry-and-audience research publication released on July 1, 2021 by iiMedia Research (艾媒咨询) through its entertainment industry research channel, positioning China’s virtual idol market as a fast-scaling segment driven by rising online entertainment demand and advances in networked audio-visual production, and organizing its analysis around (1) market context and growth logic, (2) industry scale measurement and forward-looking estimates, (3) internet user “chasing stars” behavior and virtual-idol engagement, and (4) commercialization pathways, risks, and outlook; its headline quantitative claims include an estimate that China’s “virtual idol core industry” reached 34.6 billion RMB in 2020 (70.3% year-on-year growth) with a projection of 62.2 billion RMB in 2021, alongside a broader “industry-driven” (spillover/related) market estimate of 645.6 billion RMB in 2020 and a projection of 1,074.9 billion RMB in 2021, framing these two layers as a way to separate the direct virtual-idol economy from the wider value chain it stimulates; on the audience side, the report states that more than 80% of surveyed internet users have a routine “fan/chasing” habit and that 63.6% report supporting and following virtual-idol-related updates, using these findings to argue that virtual-idol IP has unusually strong lifecycle durability because it can be iterated in design, persona, and content to track shifting tastes while supporting monetization through content and merchandise ecosystems, and it explicitly indicates that a full high-definition PDF edition can be downloaded from the report page.