Rise today, fall tomorrow: The streamers who are disappearing from China

A month ago, Li Jiaqi disappeared from the internet. The 30-year-old streamer, also known as Austin Li, was – until recently – one of China’s biggest internet celebrities, with 64 million followers on Taobao, an online shopping platform. He once sold 15,000 lipsticks in five minutes in a sales competition against Alibaba founder Jack Ma, earning him the nickname “China’s lipstick king.”

But the superstar salesman was silent after his popular live show was abruptly stopped on the eve of the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre this year. Just before the abrupt end, Li showed the audience a multi-layered ice cream decorated with Oreos and cookies that looked like a tank.

Hours later, Li issued an apology on his social media account, citing technical issues.

“Sisters, I’m sorry. We cannot continue the live broadcast tonight because of our internal equipment failure,” Li said. “You can go to bed early, please. Products that were not shown will be presented to you in our future live streaming sessions.

But Li did not appear at two live broadcast events scheduled for the following days. He has since disappeared from the online space, suspending all streaming activities without explanation.

Their Weibo and WeChat accounts still exist, but have not been updated since early June.

The long silence is unusual for Li, who hosted around 250 livestream sessions last year. Li and his agency did not respond to requests for comment.

He is not the only internet star to disappear in China in recent months. In December, authorities levied a record $210 million fine for tax evasion on Huang Wei, known to followers as Viya.

Huang had millions of followers on China’s major social media and shopping platforms — including Weibo, Taobao and the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin — but his accounts were removed in December. She hasn’t appeared online since.

Known in China as the “queen of live streaming,” the 36-year-old actress has become one of China’s most popular influencers over the past decade, helping to sell products worth billions of dollars.

While Li and Viya are absent from the internet, an unlikely candidate has emerged to take their place in China’s live-streaming world.

Dong Yuhui, a former English teacher, has attracted millions of followers after he started offering free English teaching sessions while selling products online. He helped his company attract 22 million followers on Douyin’s live streaming platform in less than two months.

Viya and Dong did not respond to requests for comment.

The sudden rise and fall of China’s most famous influencers underscores the vulnerability of those who rely on the internet for their livelihoods in the world’s second-largest economy.

While Li and Viya have almost certainly been censored by the government, the crackdown on live broadcasts is part of a broader regulatory effort by the Communist Party to impose greater oversight over private industries from technology to real estate.

Since coming to power in 2012, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has called for the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”. Tighter control over all aspects of society – business, education, entertainment and culture – is central to this vision.

Starting in late 2020, Xi launched a regulatory attack aimed at “reducing economic inequality” and curbing what the government sees as the excesses of capitalism. The crackdown, at its height, wiped out $3 trillion in market value for Chinese companies around the world.

“One thing that the Chinese government has demonstrated over and over in recent years is that nobody is that important economically, culturally, politically, etc. that cannot be censored, fined, banned or, at worst, disappear altogether,” said Cara Wallis, an associate professor at Texas A&M University who studies China’s media industry and online culture.

“This fact, combined with broader geopolitical uncertainty, makes it seem like it’s riskier to do business in China now,” she said.

‘Innocent mistake’

Xi’s government has not shown much tolerance for controversial political statements, no matter who makes them or what the statement was intended to do. So it’s not too surprising that Li’s tank-shaped ice cream hit a nerve.

The shape of the tank is a sensitive symbol in China, associated by many with the Tiananmen massacre of 1989. On the eve of June 4, 1989, Chinese leaders sent heavily armed tanks and troops to clear Tiananmen Square in Beijing, where protesters Students gathered for weeks to demand democracy and more freedoms.

The crackdown, which killed hundreds, if not thousands, of unarmed protesters, is avoided in classrooms and strictly censored in the media. People born in mainland China after the incident are unlikely to have much knowledge on the matter.

Wallis said Li was never overtly political and would have nothing to gain by trying to make a political statement.

“Regarding Li Jiaqi, I really think it was an innocent mistake,” added Wallis. “And as many have pointed out, most of his fans would probably not even notice any connection between the ice cream cake shape and the June one.”

But his quick ban indicates how sensitive Chinese censors can be in this environment, she said.

Rongbin Han, an associate professor at the University of Georgia focusing on China’s internet and media policy, also believes Li may have made an “inadvertent” mistake. But the Tiananmen crackdown is a clear taboo in China and the timing is “fatal,” he added.

The fact that Li’s live broadcast was immediately interrupted indicates “the progress the Chinese state has made in the realm of censorship,” Han said. “Clearly, it’s going beyond simple keyword filtering.”

“In general, we see an increasing level of uncertainty about following political taboos and not crossing certain boundaries,” he added.

Intensification of repression

Two weeks after Li’s show was halted, the National Administration of Radio and Television – one of the main media regulators – and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism jointly released new rules banning 31 “misbehavior” from live broadcast presenters. .

Streamers must “hold correct political and social values,” according to the rules. They must also self-regulate and avoid “illegal and harmful” content during the show, and must not post anything that “harms the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party”.

Those who seriously violate the rules will be blacklisted and permanently banned from the business, according to the regulation.

The new regulation is a latest move by Beijing to step up its crackdown on the country’s growing live-streaming industry.

“There’s probably a need for some regulation of live streams whose content falls into the ‘professional’ areas mentioned in a section of the regulations,” Wallis said, referring to one of the rules that requires live streams to have the right qualifications when talk about topics. such as law, finance, medicine and education.

“But the general emphasis on harmony, the promotion of socialist values, the right view, etc. in the whole new code of conduct really speaks of tighter ideological control,” she said.

David Craig, a communications professor at the University of Southern California, said it has always been difficult to do business in China, especially as companies and executives become very powerful economically and culturally, “which the state considers threatening.”

But he noted that timing could be a factor in China’s tightening grip.

“Every five years, these waves of dramatic, over-the-top governance appear just before the [congresso do Partido Comunista],” he said, adding that dramatic repression tends to fade away or reduce severity afterwards.

Stability is high on Beijing’s agenda this year as Xi looks to secure a third term in power during a leadership reshuffle twice in a decade in late autumn.

Worsened outlook

A strict crackdown on the growing live-streaming industry may not be good news for China’s economy. According to iResearch Consulting Group, the size of China’s live streaming e-commerce market reached 1.2 trillion yuan (US$178 billion) in 2020, an increase of 197% over the previous year. The consulting firm expects it to grow to 4.9 trillion yuan ($726 billion) by 2023 at the same growth rate.

But that was before the world’s second-largest economy started to slow down. China’s economy grew by just 0.4% in the second quarter from a year earlier, the worst performance since the start of 2020. Consumer spending is weak, while unemployment is rising.

Policymakers now face increasing challenges to keep growth steady as the country grapples with a sharp slowdown in activity due to Beijing’s strict zero Covid policy, a hard-hitting regulatory crackdown on the private sector and a debt-causing housing crisis. growing in banks and growing social protests.

Concerned about the worsening outlook, Beijing has signaled it will relax its protracted crackdown on the technology sector, which is a key driver of growth and the main source of high-paying jobs.

In recent weeks, high-ranking government officials have tried to cheer up the internet industry and pledged to support tech companies that seek paths in foreign markets.

But market confidence remains fragile. Last week, the State Administration for Market Regulation said it had fined several tech companies for violating antitrust rules on disclosing transactions. The news immediately sparked a further sale of shares.

“The fact that a social media influencer who is not politically motivated can inadvertently become a target of censorship clearly sends a signal with chilling effects,” said Han.

“In this sense, it could have adverse effects on the government’s plan to boost the economy,” he said.

The intensifying crackdown on major live streams comes as the e-commerce sector shows signs of slower growth amid regulatory tightening and an economic slowdown.

During this year’s June 18 online shopping festival – China’s second-largest e-commerce event after Singles Day in November, total sales generated on major e-commerce platforms rose by just 0.7% from the same period last year, decelerating sharply from growth of 27%. in 2021, according to data from Chinese e-commerce analytics company Syntun.

With information from CNN’s Nectar Gan.