China's emerging livestream e-commerce industry is commodifying individual live-streamers every second they "killed" the products by tens of thousands.
(Note: "sec-kill" originally refers to "killing an enemy within a second" among online gaming communities. In the following piece it refers to the Chinese slang "miao sha", the instant large-scale success during online sale sessions.)
When the sentiments of boycotting Black Friday are rising in the West, the extravaganza of Single Days coupled with live streaming commerce in the Chinese market is hitting another record-high figure. I start to wonder, why a country like mine is stepping closely into Westernized consumerism while it has done everything to differentiate itself from the capitalist West with its own “Chinese characteristics?”
The most visible Chinese characteristic I could see here is the “innovative” commodification of living human beings by wrapping them with lush slogans promoting the “sec-killing”: Buy it! Buy it! Buy it!
What about the invisible ones? With the quote "the personal is also political-ecological" in mind, I explore along the vine of everyday consumerism.
The wide outreach of social media in the current digital age has offered these live-streamers prominent careers in e-commerce. However, livestreaming sale sessions especially with the focus on alleviating poverty are problematic. The locals in the rural poor struggling to adapt to modernization are the most vulnerable. Making their way out of the poverty trap without a comprehensive societal support system that empowers them is challenging.
Therefore, Wang Hong (“internet celebrity” in Chinese) like the “Queen of Goods” Weiya, taking up the role of “helping minority tribes to sell their local handcrafts", elegantly sec-killed 500 pre-sale orders, then 2000, and on and on. Everyone present in that livestream room was taken away with their breath. The power of completing thousands of orders in an eyeblink filled the room with "wow"s.
Except the women who are dressed in their best costumes representing the ethnic minority tribe. I see her reluctant to smile along, and the captions of "happiness" cast on the screen could not be more superficial. How can they be happy with some random influencers bragging about the scarcity and the dearness of the handcrafted bracelets? Their dedication and cultural sensation embedded in the handcrafts are reduced to the sole form of consumptive pleasure of materialistic possession?
Here is also the king of live-stream e-commerce, Jiaqi Li. The slogan of triple "Buy it!"s earned him the title "Lipstick Brother No. 1". "O.M.G.! Buy it! This is the only lipstick you need for life. Buy it!" In one of his live streaming sale sessions, Li sold tens of thousands of lipsticks within five minutes. With my previous background in language studies, I was also amazed by his enthusiastic voice and content that caters to anyone who has been longing for the lipstick of their life. He was hailed from head to toe for his success.
However, I also see him as the classic representation of livestreamers, who are creatively commodifying themselves, and in most cases, voluntarily doing so for the sake of maximizing sales. The ability to gain the top hits and the most orders determines their success. Streaming hour after hour in front of the ring light with flawless make-up on is their new life norm.
These individual livestreamers are moulded into components of the profit-making machines of e-commerce titans. They are not spared with the time to rest because the business models decide that every second off live-streaming platforms will leave the company's race for market revenues at stake. The machine will not allow them to stop until they are worn out.
But, what is it all about if we boil it down with the perspective of political ecology? What is it that is personal and political-ecological?
The political and economic structure in Chinese territory has determined that the freedom of the market economy can prevail with national and local regulation. But the rapid development of e-commerce has outpaced the regulatory capacities. The e-commerce titans have taken advantage of the regulatory loopholes and continue to expand their appetite for revenues.
Individual livestreamers as part of the gig economy are deluded to believe that they have their full autonomy on leading their work-life balance. They are promised the flexibility of working from home with an easy setup of a phone stand and internet fibres. In reality, they are stretched to strive for maximum sales and left with an empty promise. Their basic rights are appropriated by businesses to replicate these e-commerce successes and buy in more livestreamers into living their "dream life".
This seemingly personalized choice of career is also part of the bigger picture, in which the policy interventions that favour the market economy and capital accumulation are reinforcing this phenomenon. The pandemic has slowed down the country's economy gravely, and the growth-based economic model is craving for consumption to secure a speedy recovery.
Average citizens are incentivized to consume, and thanks to their collectivist mindset with the idea of boosting the domestic economy, this is made even more convenient. E-commerce titans also freeride these bonuses coupled with national policies that subsidize business investments for economic recovery and poverty alleviation. They act as if every order completed is proudly saving the country from the economic recession.
But the environment cannot live-stream. The more consumerism is mainstreamed in everyday life practices and institutionalized in political agenda, the more pressures will be outsourced to the environment. The ecosystem is a closed loop, in which excessively taking from nature without reciprocating is breaking up the equilibrium, thus directing us to the current unprecedented climate and ecological crisis.
"Queen of the Goods" Weiya in her livestreaming sale sessions claimed that massive orders of handcrafts would be a "win-win" for business success and poverty alleviation. This sounds rather plausible, if all the losers are muted, from nature to the marginalized minority groups.
To regain their voice of the silenced, it is necessary to acknowledge that consumerism cannot be our saviour or crisis manager. Constructing a sustainable and just system with a positive "Chinese characteristic" could start with decoupling the current economic model from consumption-based growth with regulations in place to prevent policy free-riders.
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This blogpost piece was written in November 2021, as part of the course assignment to exercise "the personal is political-ecological in everyday life" during my masters education at Lund University.