At ground level, the streets of the Wu’Ai business zone are a flurry of activity with scenes pulled from another age. Men pull carts loaded high with goods, wheeling them at a brisk trot.
But this is only the backstage. The main action takes place in the heights of the adjacent high-rise buildings, where a generation of online pitchmen and pitchwomen are trying to mint gold from talking online viewers into buying lipstick, pots, woollen hats and the vast assemblage of goods that make up the digital economy. They are livestreamers, and they are a new object of attention in this north-eastern Chinese city seeking to remake itself.
On one recent day, a group of interested shopkeepers walked between stacks of bedding on the 12th floor of one of those buildings, listening to Li Guanxiu describe how he used cellphone livestreams to transform himself from a small-time seller into an online salesman who, just the previous night, sold nearly $83,000 in goods between 7 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. In total, he netted 7,000 orders, selling sheets, pots, perfumes and more – a torrent of sales he watched in real-time on an app that lets purchase goods with just a tap as the stream continues.
“I am here to ask all of you bosses in front of me — in your career, have you ever completed 7,000 orders in a day?” he says. “Impossible.” The pandemic, too, has made clear that vendors need to rely on more than in-person sales.
Looking on is Cao Xingyuan, deputy director of the local Modern Business Park Management Committee. He is the face of a city government pushing hard to manufacture more people like Li Guanxiu, livestreamers who can use their appealing Mandarin accents and sales moxie to build a new economic base for a city based in a region that has seen its traditional iron and steel economic base fracture.
“We are not producing goods. We are producing people – talented livestreamers,” Mr. Cao says. Shenyang wants to build a livestreaming industry that sells $20-billion a year in goods. That’s a far cry from the $470-million sold in the first half of this year.
But “we need to improve the local economy,” Mr. Cao says. “We can’t let things stagnate.”
Construction of an ebullient new industry is an audacious goal, not least because Shenyang is distant from the fast-paced southern and coastal cities that have built up China’s digital economy. Closer to Pyongyang than Beijing, Shenyang is the capital of Liaoning province. Once China’s fourth-richest provincial jurisdiction, a place known as the “cradle of China’s industrial development,” it has tumbled to 15th place, with a GDP per capita of just more than $11,000, only slightly better than the Dominican Republic. Its population of 43.5 million is among the oldest in China and growing smaller, down 1 per cent since 2014.
With its rust-belt industries in decline, Lioaning rose to national attention in 2016 as the only Chinese province to report a contraction in its economy. That year it also acknowledged it had significantly falsified earlier data to artificially inflate its performance. In 2018, it once again revised downward its economic output figures, this time by 7 per cent, after Beijing cracked down on data falsification. Like much of China, the province was largely shuttered in the early days of the pandemic, although it has now largely returned to normal.
Zhang Keyun, a professor at Renmin University’s Institute for Regional and Urban Economics, likens the economic ailments of northeastern China to chronic disease. The solutions will be hard medicine, he said. To achieve a more advanced industrial structure, the region “must emphasize innovative technologies in its development strategy, such as promoting automation and robotization. But that will cause even more job losses.”
Online selling is no “antidote,” he said. “In every era, the real economy will always be the most important thing for the local economy.” Besides, “it’s not rational for people to rush to sell things online, just because everyone else is doing so. The biggest problem is the lack of originality.”
But Lioaning has already shown more skill than neighbouring provinces in finding fresh sources of growth, attracting new investment in automotive manufacturing and artificial intelligence research.
The Shenyang drive for livestreaming is among the region’s more unusual initiatives.
“People in southern China might mock our livestreaming business and say they don’t see the potential,” Mr. Cao said. “But it might just turn out that they rely on us to sell them goods. With gifted people, we’ll be able to use livestreaming as an engine, a dragon head, to lead the development of all other fields. Just like a train, if the locomotive is running smoothly, the other cars will naturally be pulled along.”
The local government has sought to smooth the way for the industry, pressing internet providers to improve connection speeds and cut fees, building studio space and offering support for small shopkeepers and mall owners alike. It now boasts 13 livestreaming bases, where the government has offered assistance to people looking to break into the market.
“We are trying to turn all shop owners into live streamers,” said Lin Kaimin, general manager at Wulian Square, a shopping mall in the area with 1,500 shops jammed into nine floors.
And business online is booming. Chinese livestreaming sales alone are expected to hit $210-billion this year, equal to a third of all 2019 retail sales in Canada. In Shenyang’s Wu’ai business district, vacancy rates have fallen from 50 per cent to 10 per cent. At Wulian, 30 per cent to 40 per cent of sales now come from livestreaming.
Nearby, the Guanghe Space Startup Incubator has assembled a roster of instructors to help shape new online and livestreaming stars. They include a Shanghai writing company to polish copy, a pair of cross-talk comedians to help guide snappier conversation, a tour guide to help find appealing spots to shoot videos and a martial arts performer who has made himself an online star – and is willing to impart his knowledge to others. Many fail to succeed. But co-founder Guan Chengyun points to one student who began training in June and by July had picked up a million online fans.
One advantage for Shenyang is that the northeastern accent, which softens the edges of Mandarin with rumbling r’s, is considered among the country’s most agreeable inflections. In part for that reason, “Liaoning is the cradle of wanghong,” a term to describe online celebrities, said Huang Yu, an instructor who works for short-video service Kuaishou.
The problem is, “it can’t keep them.” Those who gain fame tend to leave. But Kuaishou, which has sought to build an audience in China’s less-developed cities, sees virtue in what has made Lioaning unattractive to others.
“The majority of Kuaishou users are not fond of elite culture. They prefer ordinary communication, things designed for grassroots. People from Liaoning are talkative and feel approachable to views – it’s a very important quality for livestreaming,” Mr. Huang said. “People in southern parts of China don’t have those advantages.”
Still, livestreaming is no easy way to make a living. At Wulian Square, vendors open their shops for in-person sales between 6 a.m. and 5 p.m. “Then they can have dinner and prepare for livestreaming at night,” said Mr. Lin. Among them is Wang Yuhong, who averages a mere 400 viewers a night, streaming until 9 p.m. But that’s enough to make sales and she has spent 10 hours a day streaming, though she admits it can be exhausting. She takes only one day a month off work.
But the rush of sales is also intoxicating. “I can skip eating, but I can’t stop livestreaming,” Ms. Wang says.
Li Guanxiu recalled sweating through his first livestream two years ago. He lasted only 15 minutes. Now, he spends hours a day in front of a camera, adamant that he must livestream every night. One night in September, he attracted 1.19 million views.
“The old generation are used to watching the CCTV news at 7 p.m. every day. By the same token, we hope to make our live stream something our audience tunes into by habit,” he says.
“In this industry, the key to success is staying up late.”
-with reporting from Alexandra Li
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