Advertisement
China technology
TechTech Trends

How China’s influencer factories mint live streamers to feed China’s billion dollar e-commerce industry, selling everything from lipstick to rocket launches

  • Viya, known as China’s live-streaming diva with over 80 million followers on Alibaba’s Taobao, started at Xinhe in 2017, making it a Mecca for others
  • China’s live-streaming e-commerce market posted annual growth of 121.5 per cent last year to reach 961 billion yuan

Reading Time:4 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
0
Live-streamers promote products online at the 2nd China-Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) Expo in Ningbo, east China's Zhejiang Province, June 9, 2021. Photo: Xinhua
Jane Zhang

Xinhe United Creation Park in the suburbs of Hangzhou, the e-commerce capital of China, looks like any other business park from the outside.

Signs plastered on the building facades hint at what‘s going on inside. “Time is money”, “You’re unique”, “Nothing can replace you”, “Yesterday is history, good luck” and “Full of hope” are just some of the slogans meant to motivate the people who come here to learn one thing: how to become the next star influencer in China’s rapidly growing live-streaming market.

Hangzhou, headquarters for China’s largest e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding (owner of the Post), has become the hub for this new activity, which combines traditional commercial property with the live-streaming business.

Xinhe, one of the many such centres that have mushroomed across China, became a Mecca for live-streaming wannabes after it created some of the country’s top influencers, including Viya, known as China’s live-streaming diva with over 80 million followers on Alibaba’s Taobao.

The 35-year-old celebrity, whose real name is Huang Wei, was the top seller on Taobao in 2020, selling 38.6 billion yuan (US$6 billion) worth of goods, according to data compiled by Guoji, an agency tracking e-commerce data. That is equivalent to almost a third of the total global sales of America’s oldest department store Macy’s.

Viya, who used to live stream from Xinhe in 2017, has motivated many others there by proving she could sell anything from lipstick to rocket launching services, but competition is getting brutal.

Advertisement