China censors top influencer Li Jiaqi for trying to sell a 'cake'. Why?
Chinese influencer Li Jiaqi sells snacks online through live streaming on Taobao, a Chinese online shopping platform owned by Alibaba. He’s not only ‘good’ at his job, but you can also say he’s excellent.
Li Jiaqi, whose English name is Austin Li and is also known as the ‘Lipstick King’, made headlines around the world for selling an astonishing $1.7 billion worth of goods during a 12-hour live stream. That was not all, the 12-hour live stream was only a promotion for the upcoming event.
On June 3, 2022, Li Jiaqi was live-streaming through Taobao as usual, selling snacks to his millions of viewers. But his live stream was abruptly cut off sometime post 9pm. Millions of viewers were left confused staring at the screens.
Li Jiaqi announced a few minutes later that the team was facing a technical glitch and they would be back online soon. After a while, Li Jiaqi told his viewers that due to the glitch they have to end the show early and asked, most of his young viewers, to go to bed early. He also said that he will be back with one of his scheduled shows later.
The future shows never came. Li Jiaqi, a popular live streamer, has since, gone AWOL. His fans are concerned and Weibo chats show that his disappearance from the online world is making people ask many questions.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Chinese live streamer Li Jiaqi tried to sell a tank-shaped cake on the eve of June 4th and had stream cut instantly. https://t.co/EebWmT9lj8
— Joe Yizhou Xu ?? (@JoeXu) June 4, 2022
No one knows for sure what really happened, why Li Jiaqi’s live stream was cut off abruptly and where he is now. But one theory that is floating around on Chinese social media is that it could be because he referenced the bloody 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre right ahead of June 4, its anniversary.
What is the 1989 massacre? During the wake of pro-democracy protests in 1989 at Tiananmen Square, China, the Chinese military indiscriminately killed hundreds, if not thousands, of peaceful protestors, mostly students. The tragic event is symbolised around the world by the image of an anonymous man standing in front of a Tank at Tiananmen Square.
The Chinese government has tried very hard to erase the event from its history and the memories of future generations. The event is largely wiped off from Chinese internet, schools and social debates. As a result, young Chinese people born after the event do not even know about the incident. Only a few are vaguely aware of it having heard from older family members.
What did Li Jiaqi do? It is not sure whether Li Jiaqi tried to reference the bloody incident in his live stream, but netizens suspect the culprit to be a cake. In the pictures going viral, Li Jiaqi is trying to sell a cake by British brand of ice cream, Viennetta. The cake made of Oreos and a stick chocolate on top of it, modestly resembled a tank, the likely reference to the 1989 massacre.
China’s most popular live-streamer, Li Jiaqi, has his livestream disrupted after he presented a tank-like cake on the night before June 4. This sparks many young netizens to search what happened on June 4. Many said they were shocked, but they decided to believe the party. 1/ pic.twitter.com/bufQyZB0VS
— Wing Kuang (@wing_kuang) June 4, 2022
Soon after he showed the cake on his live stream, his show was abruptly cut off. For most of Li’s young viewers, they may not even know what the reference meant.
Now, the paradox that some people say is that, even Li Jiaqi himself may not have known that the tank-looking cake was a reference to a censored event. Li Jiaqi was born in 1992, few years after the 1989 incident.
Twitterati reacting to the incident are saying that the Chinese government has created an impossible situation where a young person, who doesn’t know about a censored event, thanks to them, inadvertently promotes something that is censored, but isn’t aware of it.
The Li Jiaqi paradox:
— Tony Lin 林東尼 (@tony_zy) June 5, 2022
If you want to avoid every topic censored by the Chinese authority, you have no choice but to understand all those topics inside out. https://t.co/GtNMrgtbIz
How do you expect someone to recognise something is censored, when they themselves are unaware of it, due to the censorship?
What now? Li Jiaqi’s censorship has only opened up a can of worms and increased attention towards the 1989 massacre as his fans try to dig out what happened. Some say that the Chinese censors are also in a twist, if they censor the influencer more, there will more unwanted attention around the 1989 event, an effect called the Streisand effect.
#China's No.1 internet influencer Li Jiaqi was taken off air abruptly on the eve of #June4th and cannot ask why.
— 我YJW辣(ピリカピリララ)???? Chasing in the dream (@ZaYeeffly) June 5, 2022
because a #Tank-like cake emerged in live streaming. #Tiananmen #六四#大翻译运动 #thegreattranslationmovement pic.twitter.com/fvho24B7hP
CHINA AND ITS CENSORS
China has been cracking down and trying to control pop culture. Just last year, the CPC took down over 20,000 popular social media accounts for various reasons. The Xi Jinping government has also been coming down heavily on celebrities. Even the slightest deviation from the nationalistic norms means getting wiped out off the face of the Chinese internet, an end to career, etc.