First, a bit of background: for many people living outside China, June 4th is the peaceful massive pro-democracy demonstration of 1989 that ended with massacre in the night of June 4th, with tanks roaming in Beijing. Of course there was an even more complex background to the event, which built up for months. Even if you have not paid attention, a google search or a Wikipedia page can help you figuring it out. Perhaps the most famous image that came out of that is the Tank Man, which appeared in pop culture outside China, and became a world wide symbol of resistance to tyranny.
But Chinese younger people, especially those born right after the event, were not allowed to know about it. On the Chinese internet, all traces of that event that shocked the world, including Chinese people, have been meticulously wiped out. The government is so determined to make sure that China is not aware of it, any mention of tanks in Beijing can easily lend one in trouble. This has happened many times, and not surprisingly it happened again this year.
In our 7th newsletter, we told the story of Viya, the number 1 internet influencer, whose sudden fall from stardom sparked international coverage. Not that she was famous outside China: not at all; I had never heard of her until then.
To most people outside of China, Li Jiaqi is equally obscure (his English name is Austin Li). He was the number 2 influencer back then, and of course he took Viya’s place after her fall. Still, few people outside of China heard of him. However, since he made his fame by putting on lipsticks and selling them to women, which drew lots of attention, because man with lipsticks? I have heard of him before. Many speculate that he is gay. But of course, with the government on anti-gay crackdown, he never openly admitted it.
Just to show how big he is in China, according to his Wikipedia page:
By March 2021, he had over 35 million followers on TikTok (Douyin) and seven million on Sina Weibo, earning an estimated $10–20 million per month.
According to BBC, right now, he has 64 million fans on Taobao streaming site.
BTW, if you are wondering what is going to happen to Number 3, no need. Number 3 is a woman named Xueli/Cherie, and she was already gone due to Tax evasion (with Lin Shanshan, another e-commerce star).
The current number 2 (right after Li) though is still around. His name is Xinba. We will see how long he can last: he got some problems in the past and survived: Xinba Makes a Comeback: Gains 15M Followers in His First Livestream Since the Scandal .
At the night of June 3rd, Li was promoting products in his streaming channel as usual. Then he was promoting an ice cream cake, shaped as a TANK:
Right away, his steaming video was cut and he took to Weibo to say that he encountered a technical issue in the back-end. He has not been seen since then.
His fans, mostly young people in China, started the hash tag “Melon of Li Jiaqi” on Chinese social media, trying to understand why he disappeared. Here is an English tweet describing the bewilderment of Weibo and some of Li’s fans figuring out what just happened. The first comment was about another incident just a few weeks ago, a popular internet celebrity v-blogger Sailei was banned because of Tank man image. Sailei was infamous for being ultra-nationalistic and anti-West. In May he put up a video he stole from youtube, added some Chinese caption and put it up in Bilibili in his own channel. The image at 0.38 that lasted less than a second brought his account with millions of followers down. Sailei is gone. But he is much less influential than Li, and Li never touched politics to begin with.
That is why Li’s melon is so big. People joked that half of Chinese young people learned about June 4th through Li Jiaqi. Many twitter users talked about how their friends in China asked them about June 4th after the incident.
Today, major news media outside China chimed in. That includes WSJ, CNN, Bloomberg News and BBC. Strangely enough, while SCMP reports that China’s top e-commerce influencer, ‘Lipstick King’ Austin Li Jiaqi, abruptly ends Taobao show in major live-streaming snafu , no tank or cake can be found in the article.
To Chinese people, the fact that one is so brainwashed and so determined to be apolitical, as Li has been, but ended up only detrimental to themselves, is something to behold. You have to sympathize with young Chinese: they grew up completely moulded by the party, to care only about buying and selling and personal success and then they got destroyed by the party because of it.
The only way you can be safe in China is to know everything that you have to avoid, but then, you are too political and dangerous.
Someone biked through Tiananmen square with a hidden camera on the night of June 4th to show you what it is like. See it for yourself in this video. There are police every few meters along the road repeating “Bikers, please move ahead and don’t stop”.
A video of a Chinese girl crying about her hometown, Chengdu got my attention. She is studying in Paris, and because of COVID she could not return to her beloved hometown, because the French government would not let her go, oh, I mean the Chinese government.
She cried: When I was in Chengdu, and I could not fall asleep, I can go out to have a late night meal. In Paris, I have to stay hungry till the morning. At night on the streets of Paris, there is no one but bad men, in Chengdu there will be BBQ restaurants and cold beer. There is nothing good in Paris. Even the hotpots are fake. They taste awful, and the restaurants were full of foreigners. They are not authentic. Really, when I was in Chengdu, I did not know how good Chengdu is. Only after I came out I realized it. You guys must know what is good and what is bad, Chengdu is really good. How much I want to go back! Anyone wants to swap with me?
Most of people on Twitter are not sympathetic with her.