BEIJING, December 23 (TMTPOST)— More and more high-profile influencers became the target as China is reinforcing regulation on the world’s largest market for live streaming.
Almost 30% of livestreamers had practices that violated regulations and about 40% of goods sold on livestreaming platforms were unqualified for national standards, the Zhejiang Provincial Consumer Rights Protection Committee found during a special inspection on five leading Chinese internet platforms including Alibaba’s Taobao, Pinduoduo and JD.com and two major short video platforms--Kuaishou and TikTok’s Chinese sister Douyin in this year’s Singles Day, Alibaba’s most important annual online shopping event between November 1st and 11th.
Source: Visual China
Among a total of 80 batches of goods as the inspection sample, 29 of them didn’t meet the national quality standard, representing the defect rate of 36.25%, and ten of them which don’t have production date, certification or manufacture marks, according to the committee. Among the 17 influencers under the watchdog’s scrutiny in the event including the top ten most popular ones online, Li Jiaqi, aka Austin Li, with more than 56.45 million followers on Taobao.com, and Beibeitu, a popular livestreamer which has over 10 million followers on Douyin, have been found selling mislabeling goods in their shows, China Central Television (CCTV) reported. At the meeting that summoned by the committee on Thursday, all of the five platforms said they had taken the problematic goods off shelves and some of them had imposed punishment on liverstreamers or cautioned against improper practices.
Earned the nickname "Lipstick King" for his passionate promotion of beauty products, especially various lipsticks, Li Jiaqi was recognized for his achievements in e-commerce live streaming by Time Magazine as naming one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in February. He sold an incredible RMB11.5 billion (US$1.9 billion) worth of goods in a show lasted 12 hours on the first day of this year’s Singles Day, while Viya, another top livestreamer dubbed as ‘Livestreaming Queen’, made RMB8.5 billion (US$) in sales through her 14-hour show that day. The duo power contributed 4% of gross merchandise volume (GMV) of the whole event.
Earlier this week, Viya was fined a record of RMB1.34 billion (US$210 million) and her social media accounts were suspended due to tax evasion. A couple of days later, a total of eight local tax authorities issued their warning to celebrities including livestream stars and asked them to report their tax-related problems and correct them by the end of the year. More than 1,000 livestreamers moved to pay back taxes following the government guidance to tighten tax regulation in the entertainment industry in September, the state media noted.
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