Has anyone here entered the Chinese app market?

The Chinese app market is pretty fragment. Android is most installed OS in China. There are many different app marketplaces for Android and lots of competitions.

To be honest, it will be challenging, unless you have some connections either in phone manufacturer or app marketplaces.

I am supporting one app for Chinese customer, and at same time I am developing WeChat mini program.

You need to have a company registered in China (WFoE or Joint stock) to operate here. Without a company you can't get hosting or cloud services, can't get access to WeChat mini program SDK, and so on.

I remember when I was in China and opened a bank account and while at the bank the teller helped me side load the banks app onto my phone cos they couldn't host it in the Play Store.

Yeahhhhh... the tech scene there was pretty impressive tbh. There's all the same shit as in the West but it's home grown versions. Alipay was by far my favorite.

I remember they have their own sites that function like app stores. I assume it would involve getting listed there which means navigating the registration process in Chinese which may or may not involve having to provide an address in China and things of that nature.

I managed to sign up for a bunch of accounts on local services while I was there but I doubt I would have been able to do it while outside of China for some of them at least. I also studied and passed HSK3 to be able to read enough Chinese to navigate those things on my own.

I was not trying to sell or launch apps though. Just a regular user while I was there. Hope the info has been some help.

I worked at a platform for iOS apps in Beijing a few years ago. Many of the devs using our platform were westerners.

nope. But don't you have to write your apps in chinese ? Again, if you are showing ads, you need one adsense alternative I think..