YMMV / Produce 101 China

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The rapping part of the song "Chinese Language" can be seen as this, as it isn't present in the original version of the song and isn't delivered particularly well, and potentially could have only been added because rapper Yamy was in the team.
• Broken Base:
  • Produce 101 China added a number of elements which weren't present in the Korean series, such as audition battles for A class, saving teammates, and popularity queens. Some fans prefer how it shakes things up, while other feel that they don't really add anything to the show and only make things more complicated for no real reason.
  • The merit of including male idol seniors into the third round of team performances was also debated. Some of them don't do much in their stages, and fans argued that they took attention away from the girls rather than improving the performances overall.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Wang Ju doesn't fit the traditional standards of a Chinese beauty, and was a modeling agent rather than an idol/singer/dancer like the majority of the other contestants. During the first eliminations, she was ranked 90th out of 101 and only made the cut because her team leader Yamy decided to save her as a pending trainee. However, she quickly began to gain support because of her confidence and just how different she was from the other girls, and ended up rising to 2nd place by the third eliminations. Although she didn't make the final team, her fame from competing on the show brought her significant success afterwards, arguably moreso than some of the girls who had ranked higher than her.
• Memetic Mutation: Yang Chaoyue openly acknowledged that she didn't have the singing or dancing skills required of being an idol, and yet she was popular enough to place third in the competition. An internet meme started making the rounds in China soon after, showing a picture of Chaoyue's face with a halo behind it which purportedly brought you immense luck that trumped skill and talent if reshared.
  • It got to the point where people were reportedly praying to photos of her for good luck in college placement exams.
  • People also pray to her in real life, as indicated here(although it's done in a joking way).
• Narm:
  • The Oppo R15 advertisements inserted into the show where the girls enact fake conversations with one another while blatantly extolling the features of the smartphone can be seen as this. It doesn't help that they are framed like they're supposed to be a natural part of the show, despite the fact that the girls are obviously acting during these ads.
  • The finale can also be seen as this. It's over four hours long and features some hosts who had never been seen before the finale, and a large proportion of it consists of the audience and girls basically standing around and waiting for voting to close.
• Out of Focus: Chen Yihan and Qi Yandi were never team leaders or vocal/dance centers, and had personalities that not particularly visible in comparison to the rest of the top 22. The fact that they managed to make it so far in the competition without much personal focus is highly commendable.
• Padding: One of the criticisms of the show is the inordinate amount of screentime given to the mentors, when said screentime could have been used to better showcase the girls' personalities or skills, or just get cut out entirely since some episodes are more than three hours long.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: The costumes for a majority of the team performances have been criticized repeatedly for being strange, eclectic, or most often just outright bad-looking.
  • Take, for example, the "Someone Else's Child" performance. While the team itself is stacked with talent, someone had the brilliant idea of putting them in bright red outfits and white polka dots that look like they're made out of plastic.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Produce 101 goes out of its way to make the girls weight-conscious, from giving them extra tight workout uniforms, to making them record their weights on the same piece of paper and trying to film their weights the first time they step on the scales. To Western audiences, this could easily be perceived as fat-shaming, but the girls end up telling a lot of fat jokes which, at least on camera, seem strangely lighthearted for the implications.
  • Some Chinese viewers were not happy with how straightforward Kimberley was when choosing which teammates to save during the first eliminations. She asked the girls to simply say yes or no about whether or not they wanted to stay in the show, whereas they wanted to talk about how their teammates did well and who deserved to stay the most. It ties into the somewhat abstract concept of "saving face" found in many East Asian cultures, where thinking only of yourself is generally frowned upon. Contrast this with Western values, where individualism and go-getter mindsets are prized.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The countdown MV featuring the 22 finalists in different scenarios with their names displayed in different ways is vivid and very cool. However, it's also suspiciously similar to the NCT yearbook MV, as indicated in this video.