Chinese speakers employ a robust red-for-love metaphor grounded in universal color-emotion mappings reinforced by cultural practices.

Evidence

Color Metaphor Mappings for Love Concepts: Empirical Evidence from Chinese Speakers (Metaphor and Symbol (Tandfonline))

XREF: connects to: To what extent does environmental visual adaptation (e.g., living in extreme high- or low-chroma landscapes) shift an individual’s implicit cognitive associations between achromatic light and moral valence?; Western showed significantly stronger color-valence interactions than Mainland Chinese for red-green but not red-white oppositions, revealing cultural variation in implicit color-valence associations. — The good, the bad, and the red: implicit color-valence associations across cultures

Mainland Chinese participants associate red with up and green with down, while Hong Kong Chinese associate green with up and red with down, showing culturally specific environmental cues shape… (similarity 0.88)
Western showed significantly stronger color-valence interactions than Mainland Chinese for red-green but not red-white oppositions, revealing cultural variation in implicit color-valence associations. (similarity 0.87)
The Western group showed significantly stronger color-valence interaction than Mainland Chinese (but not Macanese) in red-green but not red-white opposition; findings diverge from explicit… (similarity 0.85)
Participants across the UK and China showed an implicit association between red and high-status symbols using the IAT, with four different contrast colors. (similarity 0.85)
American consumers are predicted to perceive a red brand label as more dangerous than Chinese consumers, reasoning that red carries danger associations in the US but positive ones in China. (similarity 0.82)
Humans form associations between white and positive valence versus black and negative valence; cross-cultural implicit testing showed Western and Chinese groups did not differ in their red-white… (similarity 0.79)