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Why China’s tech chieftains have become live-streaming stars

  • The live-streaming video market saw strong household and corporate demand during China’s coronavirus lockdown
  • China is forecast to have 526 million live-streaming video users this year, up from 504 million in 2019

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Austin Li Jiaqi, left, known as China’s “Lipstick King”, goes head-to-head with Alibaba Group Holding founder Jack Ma in 2018 during their live-streamed competition on who could sell the most number of lipsticks on Taobao Marketplace. Photo: Youku
Iris DengandCelia Chen
A few years ago, many people thought the party could soon be over for China’s live-streaming video industry, as the tens of millions of yuan a year paid out to top presenters becomes unsustainable amid a decline in online viewer numbers.

The industry, however, has continued its rapid growth because of the integration of live-streaming video features with various e-commerce and entertainment platforms, and more recently, strong household and corporate demand during China’s coronavirus lockdown.

In the middle of this spectacular boom, a number of mainland China’s tech industry leaders and entrepreneurs have also become live-streaming stars, eager to cater to the vigorous appetite for online shopping in the world’s second largest economy.

“Live-streaming in e-commerce is a very innovative model that enables interaction and participation of users,” said Zhang Dingding, an internet industry commentator and former head of Beijing-based research firm Sootoo Institute. “That interaction, in turn, can drive up transactions to some extent.”

Alibaba Group Holding founder Jack Ma, for example, was one of the first major tech industry leaders to make a big splash in China’s live-streaming video market in 2018, when he did a campaign on Taobao Marketplace. Taobao, China’s biggest online retail platform, is a subsidiary of Alibaba, parent company of the South China Morning Post.

Ma took part in a one-on-one competition against professional live-streamer Austin Li Jiaqi over who could sell more lipsticks on Taobao Live, the Alibaba retail platform’s marketing channel.

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