China's most famous transgender star Jin Xing is the new face of French luxury brand Dior's fragrance, J'adore.

Jin, 53, a former male ballet dancer and army colonel, was the first person in China to publicly undergo gender reassignment surgery. This took place in 1995 and caused a stir in China at the time.

Daily tabloid Global Times, which is put out by the Chinese Communist Party, praised the collaboration on Wednesday (May 26), writing that netizens have called it a "good match" and a "great marketing manoeuvre".

Jin is known for her sharp tongue, which delivered scathing remarks on the Chinese version of So You Think You Can Dance (2013) and her own successful chat show The Jin Xing Show (2015 to 2017).

However, she also overcame great personal difficulties in her journey to become a woman and mother of three adopted children, and is widely regarded as a fiercely independent trailblazer.

On Dior's Weibo account, she appeared in a video for the brand, opening up about her doubts when she transitioned from male to female and encouraging women to be independent.

"Do not compare yourself to others," she said in the clip. "Come up with your own way of thinking to create a colourful and varied world."

Ms Vickie Zhang, a marketing expert from Beijing, said to the Global Times: "Women's perfume can very much be a gender-specific product that stresses 'femininity' in promotional materials so that consumers will desire feminine beauty.

"However, we are now in the time when the public, especially the target consumer group for women's perfume, have changed their minds about what defines women's values and so have begun to desire things that have traditionally been seen as more masculine traits, such as being independent and tough."