Shenzhen lays out plans to become a global live-streaming e-commerce hub by 2025
- China’s southern tech hub aims to attract 50 well-known influencers to the city, and cultivate another 3,000 live-streamers by 2025
- Authorities are counting on e-commerce to stimulate flagging retail sales, ravaged by the Covid-19 pandemic and an economic slowdown
China’s southern tech hub Shenzhen has unveiled a plan to become a live-streaming e-commerce hub “with global influence”, with the ambitious goal of achieving over 300 billion yuan (US$43.7 billion) in sales by 2025, in an effort to boost consumption.
The city aims to expand the local live-streaming e-commerce industry by incubating and attracting at least 100 top-tier agencies in the next three years or so, as well as building 50 industrial estates dedicated to the sector, according to an action plan released on Friday by the municipal commerce bureau.
“Live-streaming e-commerce, a new industry model, is hugely important in enabling a sustainable recovery and even rapid growth in consumption,” the bureau said in a separate document explaining the plan.
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With its new goal, Shenzhen is playing catch-up to established live-streaming e-commerce hubs in the country.
Hangzhou, home to China’s biggest online shopping platform operator Alibaba Group Holding and 69,000 live-streaming e-commerce hosts, achieved 503 billion yuan in sales in the first 10 months of 2021, according to government data last year. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
In comparison, Shenzhen had only roughly 9,260 live-streaming e-commerce hosts as of last November, achieving 152 billion yuan in sales in the first 11 months of 2022, according to a report by the Shenzhen Economic Daily.
Under its latest plan, Shenzhen hopes to entice 50 well-known live-stream hosts to station in the city, while cultivating another 3,000 live-streamers and 10,000 professional service providers.