Veteran China Ad Man Bryce Whitwam on China's Livestreaming e-Commerce Market
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Build smarter digital relationships with your customers and make every moment count with Klaviyo. Learn more at klaviyo.com. Welcome to the Seneca Podcast, the weekly discussion of current affairs in China. In this program, we'll look at books, ideas, new research, intellectual currents, and cultural trends that can help us better understand what's happening in China's politics, foreign relations, economics, and society.

Join me each week for in-depth conversations that shed more light and bring less heat to how we think and talk about China. I'm Kaiser Guo coming to you today from Syracuse University.

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And listeners, please support my work at www.cynicalpodcast.com, become a subscriber, and enjoy, in addition to the podcast, the complete transcript of the show, a weekly essay from me, or, you know, weekly-ish essay from me, and writings and podcasts from some of your favorite China-focused columnists and commentators, people like James Carter with his excellent This Week in China's History column, Paul French,

with his Ultimate China Bookshelf, Andrew Methven with the Seneca Phrase of the Week, and of course, Eric Olander and Kobus von Staden at the China Global South Project. As we all know, there are roughly 1.4 billion people in China. About 1.1 billion of them were online as of the end of last year, 2023. Of those, about 75%,

816 million, give or take, watch live streams, tuning in on their phones to vicariously enjoy someone's vacation or experience their often numbingly quotidian lives, listen to their angry rants, their tales of woe, their cries for help, or increasingly their sales pitches.

Almost 600 million people in China regularly watch e-commerce live streams, according to CNNIC, the China Internet Network Information Center. And I know this via my good friend Ed Sander, who speaks often about live streaming e-commerce and has taught me most of the little I know on the subject. So that's what, about 180% of the total U.S. population. Not quite twice, but wow. Chinese people watching videos on their phones of other people selling them stuff.

Perhaps you're thinking this is like QVC on megasteroids. Everyone tuned into the same big program, but that's not at all what's going on increasingly. These sellers are very specific and niche. They're taking advantage of increasingly sophisticated algorithms to reach their intended customers.

Of course, there is e-commerce live streaming now in the U.S. and elsewhere with the growing popularity of the TikTok store, but so far that is dwarfed by China. What does all this mean? Today on Seneca, I am joined by my old friend Bryce Whitwam, who had a long and storied career in China, mainly in Shanghai, as an ad executive for WPP and some of the agencies under that umbrella.

While I know very, very little about this phenomenon, as I said, Bryce has really focused on it and has much to say. Currently a doctoral student at Syracuse, for part of his research he conducted interviews with 25 Chinese e-commerce live stream shoppers across all sorts of different socioeconomic strata, and he has gleaned great insights into this trend.

So Bryce has generously offered to share those insights here on Seneca. Bryce, man, great to see you here. Thank you so much for making my trip here possible and for being so generous in hosting me. It's my pleasure, Kaiser. I'm a huge fan of the program. I've listened to the show since its inception. I love it. So it's my honor to be on the show. Thanks, man. You have your own podcast, right? That's correct. Shanghai Zhan, it's called. It's a

English language marketing and advertising podcasts. We do it about once every two to three weeks. All right. So tune into that station, Shanghai station, as it were. Yeah, check that out. Yeah, we were just talking about, you know, podcasting technology and it's a lot of fun.

So, Bryce, first off, you were living quite large and quite comfortably in China. I know your wife had this really popular chain of antique furniture stores. You were yourself making good money, well-respected in your industry. You're about my age, even a little bit older. I mean, we ain't no spring chickens no more. What made you decide to leave Shanghai and come back to the States and pursue a doctorate? I mean, don't those things take 12 years? I mean, aren't you going to be like,

Yeah, I ask that question to myself all the time. Yeah, like you said in the outset, I was working in advertising business. I was CEO for several agencies. And as it would, there were

circumstances that occurred mainly for the fact that COVID probably is a big contributor of it. The fact that I got a, I was, I was at MRM McCann at the time and my friend said, Bryce, NYU couldn't get professors in into Shanghai and as well as the students can't leave. So are you interested in doing, being an adjunct professor? And I said, sure, why not? I'll do it on one evening a week. And,

And at that point, I realized how much I really enjoyed it, enjoyed engaging with the students, enjoying teaching master students about marketing and media. And then I suddenly started to think about the career that I was in. And as you probably know, especially in China, the advertising industry is going through a massive transformation.

in a in generally in a downward spiral you could say more and more companies are directly dealing with platforms like ByteDance and Alibaba and Tencent and they're not actually going through third-party agencies anymore obviously this is also happening within this country in the U.S. but I saw that there was eventually it was just harder and harder to do business

At the same time, I'm no spring chicken. And you know, China is a young person's country. Yeah. No country for old men. It's not surprising once you hit 50, you get this, why aren't you home with your grandkids question. People retire at 55. It's worse if you're a woman. It's 45 in some cases. They've just increased it by three years. I know, but it's...

But still, it's a young industry, a young country, so to speak. And I just needed to move on to something else. Yeah, that makes sense. And that's when I discovered I could actually get a PhD in three years. So I got into this program here. Hopefully by this year, I'll graduate after I finish my dissertation and hit the academic world. So I think what I enjoy about

I mean, I could have gone the educational route directly from working, but I found that learning in this environment has helped me to tie to

some of the reasons why people behave the way they do and not necessarily just what they do. And that kind of, that academic side of things has improved in terms of my teaching skills, which I would say in the past were more focused on more war stories and things that I knew that I experienced in the industry. Now I have that in addition to the academic theory and learning on top of it.

Well, I mean, it seems like you're really enjoying life here. I had the pleasure of having dinner at your home last night. Your wife's awesome cooking. And you're playing French horn in the local symphony. And you've got a good life here, it looks like. No, it's awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, that's wonderful. Let's dive into live streaming e-commerce in China. Maybe first you could give the listeners and me a sense for how big it's gotten, how much of the total online shopping volume it actually accounts for, what its current trajectory looks like, what are the projections for how big it's going to get. Right now, social commerce is

encapsulates about 50% of total e-commerce. So social commerce would include what? Anything that's related to a social media experience. So when we talk about e-commerce, we normally separate transactional e-commerce, where you would go on to maybe on to Taobao or Tmall or Jingdong and you'd buy something, and social commerce, which would be much more of a social engagement on e-commerce.

on platforms like WeChat, Xiaohongshu, Douyin, places like that. So within the total e-commerce space,

Social commerce is about 50%. And of that 50%, another about 30% includes live stream commerce. Okay. It's the trajectory is that it will encapsulate a 50% of total e-commerce the way it's going. So right now it should be almost all of social commerce will, will be some, have some form of live stream commerce included in it. So,

I mean, the total e-commerce GMB is like trillions of yuan, right? That's right. I mean, that's just nuts. So we're talking about a very, very, very big industry. I'm curious. I don't know how familiar you are with... I think we talked about this. You haven't seen this film, but for people who do want to learn a little bit about sort of the influencer economy here, there's a great film called People's Republic of Desire by Hao Wu. Oh, wow.

And it's about these streamers trying to make it as Wang Hong. I mean, given your knowledge of this, how is this sort of pursuit of celebrity, this kind of exhibitionist urge that seems to be behind live streaming, how does that relate to the eventual emergence of e-commerce live streaming? Are these two totally separate pursuits or do they...

come together somehow? Well, as you would expect in China, everything is micro-targeted and micro-segmented. So a part of that is definitely that celebrity pursuit where you have influencers who really desire the stardom and try to build up their reputation online, not only to increase followers, but also sponsor products and do recommendations.

That's one way of doing it. There's also the transactional type group route who are just literally selling cheap stuff online through a live stream.

What generally is happening is that different platforms, different products, different categories will appeal to different types of influencers. So yes, amongst young people, it's still the number one most desired career choice for young graduates in China is to be an influencer. They believe that it's a quick trip to making the big bucks. Little do they know that probably about

Over 95% of social influencers in China actually are making money, decent money. Most of them are not. It's extremely competitive business. Yeah, I can imagine. I mean, it seems like everybody, I saw some survey about what they wanted to be when they grew up, and a lot of them were talking about being social media influencers. Same in America. A lot of people have this idea that they're going to be like,

you know, YouTube streamers or something? It always helps to have this experience because as we're seeing now, as there's a constant decline in actual traditional retail, we've seen in China now live streaming existing inside the retail stores. So a lot of

a lot of store personnel are also our influencers. So this person that you might meet at the store, he or she also has an account on Xiao Hongshu to flog and promote the products. So in many aspects, having this talent

enables you to be able to actually function within a modern Chinese store, which includes social commerce elements. It's not just a place to buy, to go and buy something. It's actually a place to interact with, uh, with products and social media interactions.

So where you used to walk by the cosmetics counter and an attractive young person would stop you and say, we can do something about the blackheads on your nose. Now you're going on video and being shamed into...

Totally. No, you'll see it. You'll see those circular influencer lights. Right, those ring lights. The ring lights, you'll see them in many stores in Shanghai and Beijing now within the shops because if the counter girls are not actually selling cosmetics products, they're actually talking about something that's latest and new and greatest. And they're on these social platforms either as individuals or on behalf of the company.

So, I mean, I remember there were these old live streaming platforms where you just kind of go on and you'd see randos just doing live streams, you know, whatever it was that they were doing. This was popular right around the time that I was leaving China in 2016. I remember my very good friend Anath Krishnan, who was a reporter at The Hindu, we were having a drink

not long before I left China and he was showing me all these apps. I mean, I had heard of some of them but I'd never really checked it out myself. And he was just, I downloaded a couple of them to see them. There were, you know, the infamous Muamua which kind of ended up being all about like rando hookups and there was a lot of prostitution apparently on it. But there was like

and there were like these sorts of features on Kuaishou as well, which was one of the early big live streaming apps. But it's not these platforms that have gotten big in live streaming commerce, right? Instead, and then, okay, I guess maybe this is a good time to introduce this. I mean, you'd think that

Look, Taobao had live streaming, right? Taobao had streaming anyway, but you'd think that with their near monopoly on B2C e-commerce or C2C e-commerce, that they would have been huge in this, but they're not.

And one could argue that Alibaba was instrumental, actually. I don't think they invented it, but certainly they were able to use compression technology that you could be out in the middle of nowhere in Qinghai province on a 4G line and actually engage in a live stream video. Yeah. Which is kind of unbelievable if you think about it. So you're right. And there's no question that Taobao and Jingdong follow live stream commerce. It still exists there. Yeah.

What's happened now is that there are different types of live stream commerce depending upon what you're looking for. So if you are a person, and this came out in my research, that if you're looking for a more expensive, higher involved purchase product, let's say you want to buy a pair of Bluetooth headphones.

There that moment you will make go on to a Beats by Dr. Dre site or you might go on to a. Although I would not recommend those. Or whatever either any products you will go on to those and you will engage in a live stream commerce activity when you want to find out more product information that I would call it more transactional e-commerce needs. So you're just you have an idea of what you want. You just want to find out more information. Right.

The other kind of live stream is what I'd call the more social e-commerce type. And within that, even that's different depending upon what platform you're on.

So if you're on a Xiao Hongshu, it is definitely about product information, product research, a little bit similar to what you get on Taobao, but you're a little bit divorced from transaction. Because really, when you go to Taobao, you're kind of thinking about what am I going to get? And you actually may at that point even read some of the static review comments similar to what you see on Amazon in the U.S. Sure, sure.

So if you're on Xiaohongshu, you're still in a product discovery mode, but you're actually looking for a deeper kind of ingrained conversation. The difference maybe is that Xiaohongshu does have e-commerce capabilities. In other words, you can buy the product on Xiaohongshu or RED as it's called in English. And then, but many people end up going to Taobao to buy the product. So your first step is RED. Your second step is Taobao.

The other kind is what's more popular on platforms like Douyin or TikTok in China and Kuaishou. And that is much more a social engagement commerce type of live stream experience where these videos actually come up in your live stream. You don't look for them. They just happen to be there.

You're looking at your cat videos and your funny things happening. And then suddenly there's a live stream. And at that point, you can choose to engage it or swipe it over. Right.

But more people are engaging with it. You talked about Douyin. I think everyone is familiar with that. I mean, if you haven't, if you're a non-Chinese speaker and you want to see what the Douyin experience is like, check out TikTok. It's very, very similar. Culturally, it's not the same thing. There's a different mix of stuff. But

a lot of people are not going to be familiar with Xiaohongshu. So maybe Bryce, you could explain to people here, what is Xiaohongshu? I would, if I had to explain, come to my head, I'd say, okay, it's a cross between Instagram and Pinterest with a lot of video capability. And I wouldn't know what else to say. How would you, is that a good start? I think it's good to understand Xiaohongshu by understanding what Instagram does not do well.

We know that Instagram is Meta's flagship product. But what it doesn't do well is does not do search very well. If you want to find out about a trend or a topic or a particular restaurant in town, what's good, it's very difficult to find it unless you know the ID identification of the person's posting or you use hashtags to search.

Shaohongshu or red is, yes, it's kind of like Instagram meets Pinterest in that you have different, you start off with different search categories and within these categories are your interests. Then you can start digging deeper into more granular type of information around those particular categories.

products or topics. And then from that, you can engage with influencers or how-to videos and all sorts of different types of activities. It's like a very well-organized YouTube, if I could describe it. It's certainly much better...

search experience than you get on TikTok or Douyin. People feel, people that use Xiao Hongshu and that do not use Douyin will tell you that they feel that they're in greater control, that they feel with Douyin they're out of control. It's basically the algorithm tells you exactly what you're going to see. With Xiao Hongshu Red, you are much

have a much greater amount of control, both in terms of the selection of products and videos that you can watch, as well as the types of topics and interests that you can find. It's not a coincidence that most Chinese students outside of China, even within this country, still use Red or Xiaohongshu in American cities to look for supermarkets and restaurant reviews and everything because it's such an amazing search tool.

Wow. Well, I had no idea that it was so good in terms of search. And both of those are things that I would find at different points in my day useful. Sometimes I know exactly what it is that I'm looking for. I want, you know, pewter satanic themed jewelry as one does. And other times I want some rando to show me something that I might be interested in, some, you know,

cool little hack for you know organizing my bathroom that I had no idea of and you know I ended up buying a shower caddy I didn't need but you know very cool I want to ask you about why Taobao lost its mantle what was it that they they didn't do well enough besides like you said I'm

I mean, like you said, they're still big, obviously, right? But why does the trend now toward these more niche, micro-targeted streaming sites, why is this starting to eat so badly into Taobao's dominance?

I think it's nothing that they didn't do well. We see even in Amazon with Amazon Prime trying to get people to stay on Amazon longer with movies and sports activities and things. These are intentions by Amazon to keep you on the platform as long as possible.

Now, Alibaba did that as well, right? They collected all these video platforms and these different types of entities that would try to create this Alibaba ecosystem with the intention is that you'd never leave the ecosystem. The reality was that there were simply better platforms doing social media, social commerce that were more interesting to the viewers than what Taobao could provide. In essence, they couldn't get

They couldn't brush off their stigma of being an e-commerce platform. And an e-commerce platform is a place where you buy stuff. It's not a place where you're going to find out about cool things. Okay. So I was just talking about these two different models, you know, between the Douyin and the Xiaohongshu one. And I was thinking, you know...

What's the value add of the pitch from some influencer? I don't necessarily need that if I know I'm already in the market for fresh groceries. I want to buy 12 jin of turnips and I want them locally sourced or whatever. I already know I don't need to listen to that farmer make his pitch if I'm on Xiaohongshu.

But the impulse buy, that kind of being persuaded out of the blue about something, I had to imagine that's where the value add of the individual making the pitch comes in. And that, I think, has got to be really strongly driven by algorithms, right? Because they know you. I mean, I know like on TikTok, you know, you've got TikTok store now. We'll talk about how successful that's been in America and in non-China markets. But

That stuff kind of has my number. I mean, I get pitched stuff that I'm actually... Half the time, I'm like, I will sit through the first 20 seconds or 30 seconds and see what it is that this guy's selling there in live streaming. And I strongly encourage you, the next time you go back to China, open Douyin and just play...

algorithm tag for just for laughs click on something watch something that's completely of no interest to you and then see how many other similar videos live streamers come up after you watch that video I did it with baby strollers I just saw something on baby strollers and I watched it and then I stopped and then I literally every third video was something about baby strollers the algorithm in China is hyperdrive compared to this

this country, be honest. It's very powerful. So I think that when you look at why people are so engaged in this is

Most of it is to do with authenticity, right? It's this idea that someone that's very relatable to you is able to make a pitch about something, cut through the BS, and actually you can engage and you can start to text. And with the person, you can have a conversation with them, not a verbal conversation, but a text conversation. And to a lot of people, it just seems like a very authentic way of buying something.

Whereas it's not a one-track type of programming where you're just watching someone sell stuff. You're actually engaging in a two-way dialogue. And that is the magic of live stream. And that's why it's so popular in China. Right. But...

The magic doesn't... I mean, that's not in evidence from watching a baby stroller video and then being pitched baby-related stuff. That doesn't require sophisticated algorithms. What requires sophisticated algorithms is for them to see you watch the baby video and then watch Formula One racing and then watch a video about mountain climbing. And the really... The insane oceanic volumes of data that they're able to process...

tell you that there's this weird statistical aberration whereby people who show an interest in mountaineering, in baby strollers, and in Formula One racing happen to be avid, like there's a robust statistical chance that they will really enjoy country western music. And so when the

some country artist is touring China, you're going to be pitched for their tickets. I mean, that's when it's able to pick up on these...

really sort of through the grand correlations that require huge amounts of computation and tons of data and it can be delivered instantaneously, that's where the value really shines through, right? No, absolutely. And there are opportunities like that all the time. If you're looking for ways to pitch, for example, a

I used to work on Pantene shampoo and they would run ads. They would, yes, they would run ads on places where people were thinking about their oily hair. And so Chinese generally believe that if they eat oily food, then they get hair, their hair gets oily. That's not true? No, it's totally, there's no correlation. Of course not. But,

But the algorithm has determined that there is a correlation that people start thinking about it. So suddenly you'd be looking at salad oil and then there'd be a advertisement for Pantene because there was the correlation between the two. Wow. Yeah.

That's kind of evil, but it makes a lot of sense. What should we know about the demographics of the Chinese consumers who are flocking to these live-stream e-commerce sites of the type that you see, Douyin and Kuaishou and Xiaohongshu? Do they skew in one direction when it comes to gender? Is there an age bracket we're talking about? Is this correlated to income? Is it correlated to education? Is it correlated to urban versus rural? Anything like that?

It's definitely more urban. It's definitely more tier one, tier two cities in a lot of cases. It's definitely Gen Z, these people and female if you had to skew it in a certain way. So platforms like Xiaohongshu, like Red, they'll be 70, 80% female.

So it's generally because I think Chinese women do value entertainment through shopping, shopping entertainment as an experience, as we call shoppertainment. They value that maybe more than than their male counterparts. There is holding their purse the whole time and looking for a place to sit down. Pretty much. That's me. Yeah.

So the other side of it is that it tends to be what used to be more Gen Z, but now we're seeing a greater expanse of the demographic into millennials and even over 50s that are now experiencing it because.

as with everything in China because it's such a micro segmented economy that people even over 60 years old will have live stream engagements with certain particular products. It's still 10 to 20% of that population that actually will gauge the live stream commerce experience as opposed to some 70, 80% of a Gen Z. But you can see that the pie is growing in terms of older groups.

In terms of upper tier and lower tier segments, generally Kuaishou does much better on a lower tier segments than let's say Douyin, which would be more in terms of the upper tier, bigger city crowds. Yeah, Kuaishou was always sort of looking for that lower tier, like the Shenzhen, the county towns or whatever.

Interesting. Now you did 25 interviews. These were qualitative interviews for the research you're doing. Share some stories. Tell me some of the things that you learned in doing that and who are the people you interviewed? I mean, they were like all over the map, right? Pretty much. I mean, people that I met mainly in Shanghai, I interviewed, uh,

predominantly younger people around the age of 25 to 30. I also interviewed about 10 or 12 over 40, over 45 people in that age group as well. Many of the people were from different parts of China and

as working in Shanghai as their first job. And then I also talked to a fair number of migrant workers as well. Okay. Interesting. And what were some of the surprises that came out of these interviews? I think what blew me away the most Kaiser was that, uh,

mass e-commerce, live stream commerce plays that we saw in the past done by those like Austin Lee or famous... Who's he? This is the Lipstick King guy? The Lipstick King guy. Not to say that Austin is still not popular, but his popularity is waning. So tell me about this guy. I mean, what's his story? I mean, and how did he... Why a guy selling lipstick? He was a...

assistant at L'Oreal. Okay. And it was clear that he knew everything about lipsticks and that was his real stick. But more importantly, he was very, very good at it. His lipstick. That's right. The lipstick. Excellent lipstick. And as a result, he was

able to utilize his abilities to convince people not just to sell lipsticks, but also a full range of cosmetic products and

And suddenly he just got massive where his evening audience, he was on every night. He could get 35 million people on a live stream event. And he would spend about three minutes per product category and move on to the next. So this is a very different model than the one we're talking about. It's exactly. What happened? I seem to remember there was some scandal attached to him. Is that, is there?

Am I remembering wrong? Well, there are two different scandals. The one scandal was the tank cake that he was given on June 4th. Like, go figure what were they thinking on that one. The second one was probably more concerning. I'm not sure why tanks would be associated with that particular day. I don't know why he got a tank cake. But the other one was more discerning. And that...

And that came out in my research. Several people told me that after he made a snarky remark about people that said they couldn't afford the expensive products, he told them that they should save their money and treat themselves. And people thought it was very that he was really talking down to a lot of people who were having a tough time, especially right after COVID. And now he's trying to tell them to save their money and they shouldn't complain so much.

A lot of people told me, a lot of my participants told me that they stopped watching Austin Lee after he said that. So I knew it had a huge impact. But I think what, that really wasn't the reason, I think, that live stream commerce has really transformed.

Yes, the big shows, the ones on Taobao and those during the commerce events, which Double 11 is one, 618 is one, where they have these big live stream shopping shows like Black Fridays in the US. And people always watch the live stream shows because the stuff is like 40% off. All right. Those exist. But these, what I found was that people are now more engaged in shopping.

niche, micro-targeted type of experiences where they and only 300 other people are watching this live stream event. That's what kind of blew me away. And they tend to like those kind of live stream events because one, they feel that the person that they're watching has a great deal of expertise in that particular subject. Yeah.

And two is the ability to actually create that two-way dialogue that unlike 35 million on an Austin Lee event, nobody's going to be able to talk to him, that they can actually ask the guy, oh, that's a nice red shirt. What does it look like in black? And the live stream guy will literally pull off the shirt and put the black one on for you. So these are comments that are on the bullet comments. This is something that I think a lot of

Western people have a great deal of difficulty accepting that there would be these comments flying across the screen. I mean, if that were on, say, you know, in YouTube Live, I mean, it's already distracting enough to have them all in the comments on the right. But to actually have them flying across the screen would probably drive a lot of people crazy. Of course, Chinese is a much less sort of horizontally dense language.

Or more horizontally dense. They call them da mu, but they're really... They're not... I know what you're talking about, like on Billy Billy, where the video is going across the ha-ha-ha-ha-ha when the joke comes up. Right, right, right. That... These are...

The Damu in this case is in the comment box, which you'd see on TikTok. It's the same, like you mentioned already, that if they want to see what Doin's like, go on TikTok. It's exactly the same on the live stream. And they're consolidated within that one's place.

So, yes, that's to answer your question. Those comments are within that space and people can ask or they can read what other people are saying. So there's this kind of trust, the sense of authenticity and a kind of interactivity, the sense of like, you know, my question is going to be answered by by this guy in the live stream. Yeah. So I can see why that would be really, really compelling.

One thing we were talking earlier and it cracked me up when I said, you know, who are these sellers? And you were telling me they'd be like people from all over China. They'd have these like really like almost unintelligibly thick regional dialects, like some farmer from Henan. And we'll get to the whole farming thing in just a second. But I said, isn't that an obstacle? And you said no, which I thought was surprising. Explain that. Break that out. The more authentic you are,

the more people will believe you.

So in many cases, especially some of the migrant working ladies that I talk to, they see a studio. They see someone who's all in a fancy outfit. They see like props that are way too expensive. They immediately swipe. They will not watch them. They will pay attention to someone who's got the opposite. Or in other words, that they are selling a product in the environment that you would expect that person to be in.

for the authenticity thing. It's absolutely that. It's about authenticity. They'll say like, even to the point where if someone says that they're from a certain part of Shanghai or near Shanghai, but they have a different accent, they might even detect that as being fake. So they're really looking at little nuances within the experience to determine whether or not the live stream is real or bullshit. That's hysterical.

I mentioned agriculture and I gave, you know, the example of like, you know, wanting to buy turnips or, but that's real, right? Oh man. I was so amazed at how many people are buying food and they will really say like, they'll, they'll ask them like, Oh, you said the grapes are sweet. How sweet are they? And you could ask specifically and they'll have the farmers on there. And, and this guy is definitely low tech. He's in a field somewhere with a, with a, you know, probably one of his,

His son's holding a flashlight and he's actually doing this live stream. And these kind of live streams are extremely popular. I heard it so often during my interviews that I actually went to a traditional market. And I know this is not a statistically accurate measurement, but I did ask some of the traditional market people. I said,

is this impacting your business? And they said, absolutely. Oh, wow. Yeah. That people are now buying fresh fruit and vegetables from directly from the farm, uh, to them and not going to the traditional markets like they used to farm to table. Yeah.

So, I mean, it's, and that is oftentimes what a lot of people, food, by the way, is the number one live stream product sold on Douyin. Well, yeah, you know, of course it is, right? I mean, it's China we're talking about. That's true, yeah. Well, I mean, we hear about this phenomenon a lot. I mean, it seems like it would very much sit,

at the intersection of multiple trends. Obviously, you have fears about food safety. I mean, ever since the San Luis Milk scandal in 2008, people have had a lot of concerns about heavy metals and rice and all this stuff. So yeah, they want to know a little bit about the provenance of the food that they're eating and they're feeding to their families. That makes sense. But there's also this kind of back-to-nature thing. A lot of the urbanites, a lot of the people who are feeling like,

you know got to get out of the rat race got to get back to nature part of that is dietary a lot of them are you know and and people generally as you know they will go they will they will go miles for a great deal if they can get the the freshest fruit at the lowest price that to them is that's the perfect combination and and so how are these traditional industries like i mean even agro businesses agriculture how are they getting involved in the live stream commerce trend i mean

How small are we talking about? This isn't something that like Meng Niu or Ely is going to be able to take up. These are too big. These are gigantic agribusinesses, big dairy in China. We're talking about household scale farmers?

I think that there are different types. Okay. There's the household scale farmers. And then there are those household scale farmers that pretend to be that, but are actually sponsored by large corporations that you just don't know it. Uh,

I think that there's going to be, there's a lot of that where you will see people actually getting into the authenticity game because they realize that they just can't use the traditional way of, of talking to consumers before that. Yes. I mean, Olympic athlete sponsorship is good and we can get Eileen goo to say something good about our products. But the reality is that this level of type of engagement is much more believable and it's,

bigger brands have to kind of get into that authenticity game, even to the point where they will be able to create this facade of authenticity by collaborating with some local farmer. Or like cooperating with some key opinion leader, a KOL, as much as I dislike that term. They drive sales through these platforms by collaborating with KOLs. Absolutely. And the other part is that

There are, as I said, there are different types of live stream commerce experiences. There are people being more sophisticated in terms of creating more engaging content than just selling something.

One interesting live stream commerce I noticed was a guy on Xiaohongshu who is losing weight. And his whole live stream experience is about his weight loss journey. But it's also his platform to sell healthy snacks. So he's actually a live stream commerce person selling healthy snacks. But he wraps it in a conversation about his weight loss.

That's pretty clever. But I mean, I guess I've seen analogous things. I mean, for sure, you know, on TikTok and things like that, you know, people talking about their own weight loss journey and then like selling some protein powder or whatever. I mean, you know, all that stuff. Let's talk a little bit about how much this is moving to the United States. I mean, I've obviously noticed more and more TikTok shop live streaming pitches in my feed.

And yeah, I mean, I'll like have like a little bit of insomnia and then pick up my phone and start scrolling through TikTok at night. And I mean, it kind of bugs me a bit because, you know, I really only want to see dudes shredding on guitar. And I just really want to see like amazing dance and clips from comics, you know, comedian stand up and stuff like that. But then I'm constantly inundated with these things. How is it being received here?

I think at first it was very, very early stages. And as you and I know, we kind of saw the similar experience within China when it first started. It's very niche little products, things that people may not necessarily want, but are being told that they really need. I think TikTok shop, especially TikTok,

Works best and as well as doing in China it works best on impulsive products Yeah that you don't really have to spend a small fortune that you can get that freeze-dried candy or you can get that houseplant or these type of things that are relatively impulsive and look fun and that can convince you that oh Yes, there's a better chewing gum than the one I'm buying which is full of chemicals and it's basically eating a piece of plastic and

So those type of experiences are quite popular. But what's happening now is that I read a statistic that 40% of Americans will buy at least one product on live stream commerce in 2024. So I think what's happening now is two things. One is that because...

The average Gen Z could spend up to four to five hours of time on TikTok a day. There's no question that brands need to be in that space in some way.

A live stream enables them to have that sense of conversation. And suddenly they are becoming more, they're investing more into the live stream space than they did before. When I'm seeing these guys, what's the percentage of these live streamers? I mean, I know this is a show about China, but just out of curiosity, what percentage of them are actually Chinese?

hired by some major brand, like the guy swinging Lenovo headphones. Is that a Lenovo employee or is it some guy who just bought wholesale a bunch of Lenovo headphones on AliExpress or on, you know, Timu and is now selling them on TikTok and making a couple of bucks? I haven't seen the statistic, but I would say that it's probably the latter. It's just some guy that's got a truck full of Lenovo headphones is just selling them on a profit. It's really not company sponsored yet.

Obviously, by American law, they're supposed to say sponsored or disclosure. They have to have some sort of advertising disclosure on the live stream to tell you that it's sponsored by Lenovo. But as you know, that often does not happen. Only about 20% of influencers in this country will actually disclose that they're being sponsored. All right. Well, to wrap this up, let's go back to China. I mean,

What does this tell us broadly about the changing behavior of Chinese consumers? I mean, do you think this represents broader changes in Chinese society in some sense? I mean, is there any sort of big picture takeaway about patterns of consumption in China or is it too early to say?

I think that one of the greatest changes to take place is how retail is transforming within the experience. So you can't really look at live stream separately. I mean, sure you can. It talks about this way that people are...

being much more inundated by impulsive products, many times of brands that they don't know. Certainly we could talk about that. But what I see it as is a bigger ecosystem that includes traditional retail, mobility technology, and the ways that people now engage in their shopping experiences.

And yes, China is full of dead shopping malls. Aside from the food courts, if you go up to the retail areas, there's a lot of empty spaces. Yeah, but boy, those shopping on those food courts are busy. They're crazy busy. But if you go up to the second and third, fourth floor, it's pretty empty. What you are seeing is that retail that's able to... And by the way, that trend is happening in this country as well. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. So...

What China is doing in a sense from a societal perspective is kind of reinventing the retail experience by looking at how online and offline interact with each other. So people will go into a store maybe to browse to buy something online.

or to reaffirm what they've already thought or read about on a particular influencer platform. And that reaffirmation comes within the experiencing the product, and then they will subsequently buy the product online anyway. So it's the interaction that goes on between the retail shop, the online experience, and the mobility device that's in their hand. Yeah, yeah.

So are there, I mean, do you foresee any challenges, any obstacles for the industry developing? I mean, are there potential disruptions on the horizon, perhaps from like government regulation on this? I mean...

There's got to be some concern about how this is going. I mean, we've only seen fairly minor scandals, but when something really bad happens, when somebody is, when there are a few bad actors, that can really, you know, I think, cause all sorts of havoc in especially new areas of internet business. I just think that

If you're challenging the traditional markets, then you are challenging something that's generally speaking for the last thousands of years has not been influenced by anything. That's something that's never changed in China. Traditional markets exist.

and they except they're in communism but i mean but the the way that you interact uh the way that you buy vegetables and you get the you get the tone you get the scallions for free that has that has that is a system that has not changed at all uh this is disrupting that and i you mean they don't give you free scallions

Actually, Ding Dong, the one vegetable platform, will give you free scallions if you buy vegetables from them. But I think that we are looking for some type of disruption in traditional markets, and then we'll start to see some type of regulation come up. I think also, too, that within this model, there's an awful lot of...

and this is e-commerce in general, there's an awful lot of distribution challenges that take place. In order for me to get a bag of grapes delivered to my door in 30 minutes requires a guy on a motorcycle to come at 11 o'clock at night and drive to my home and deliver that 30-quai bag of grapes. It's not a very efficient way to buy food. No, it's actually terribly wasteful.

Yeah, but hey, it's economic activity, right? And it's boosting consumption. So that's what we need. Exactly. I am so indignant about the price of Cong in American supermarkets. Scallions are like...

They're like $1.50, $1.75 for one little skinny-ass bundle right now. And they were $0.33 for the longest time in American grocery stores. And now, what the hell has happened? Why are green onions so goddamn expensive now? It just really pisses me off. I mean, maybe I'm going to... You just realized when you go back to China how...

how vegetable deprived Americans are. Yeah. Yeah. And how, how, how Chinese eat so much better than we do. Yes. Yes. Especially vegetables. I think, you know, it's the cuisine that does justice to vegetables like no other. Truly, truly. Absolutely. I agree with that. All right. And then that happy note, um,

Let's move on to recommendations. I know you have to get to orchestra practice, so we'll be quick about this, but I got to say I have very high hopes on this front when it comes to recommendations for you because I remember you giving me two excellent books. You lent one to me and then told me to buy another, but you lent me a book called The Bear Comes Home, which has nothing to do with the Chicago-based gastro drama about the bear, but it's about an actual bear who happens to be a really kind of virtuosic saxophone player.

which is a great book. You don't read a lot of books about bears who play saxophone, so I remember that one well. And that was 10 years ago or more. Yeah, I wish I had a book like that, Kaiser. The other one, though, I gotta say, was the book of, you know, the movie Little Big Man, Dustin Hoffman. I remember you raving about the book.

And so I bought that and you were right. It was just fantastic. It was really great. So what's your recommendation? So unfortunately today, I will not recommend books. I thought in timing with the topic today, I thought I'd recommend two influencers. Oh, okay. One I really, one I followed just from a,

from a scholarly perspective, I think not because I enjoy his that I can literally sit and watch his live stream show for a long time. It's very painful, but I find it to be the closest thing to how China is impacting American shopping. The guy's name is Jeffrey Star. Jeffrey is a gender fluid live stream sensation on TikTok.

He has his own store in Wyoming. He sells dried meat and cosmetics. - Those things pair so well after all. - I know. And he's so good at creating the experience. And you swear up and down

that you are watching a Chinese livestream event if you watch him. And he's doing very well. I just find that from a perspective of cultural convergence...

I find that watching him just proved to me that, that there's a lot of connections between how Chinese and American shop. If you watch that, that's what Jeffrey with a J or Jeffrey with a G J a J E F F R E E. And then star Jeffrey F R E E. He's also, he's also recorded a record. It's terrible. It's like EDM stuff. Um,

But person I really recommend to follow on TikTok is a guy named Omar Nock, N-O-K, Omar Nock. He has a great TikTok stream called Egypt to Japan without flying. He's an Egyptian guy and he's literally traveling through Egypt

He's now in China. He's in Xinjiang. But he's literally traveled through all Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. He went through all these places. And this whole point is that he won't fly. And it's just Omar is such a great guy. You watch him, you feel positive about... Humanity. No, because he always gets into these terrible predicaments and he never seems to get angry about it. He's like, oh...

They dropped me off and it looked like I had to walk five miles in the desert to get to my next stop. But that's OK. I need the exercise. He's so optimistic and positive that you just can't help to to feel great about Omar's trip to Japan. As I said, now he's he's crossed the border into China and he's just happy about everything, about every person that helps him. And it's just a great postcard of humanity.

Nice, nice. All right. Well, you know, we're both into music, and so I'm going to recommend something musical. Cool. A new album that's just out recently by the Yes vocalist John Anderson, who collaborated with an amazing group of musicians who go by the name The Band Geeks. They feature the guitarist Richie Castellano and his brother, I think his brother's name is Phil,

Richie had been with Blue Oyster Cult since like 2003. He was their live guitarist and then took over guitar duties for one of the three guitarists. Over the pandemic, and actually before the pandemic, they started putting out a bunch of great videos of these perfect Yes covers. Songs like And You and I or Siberian Catru and all the great Yes songs covering them perfectly. I mean, they were...

Often they would have a female vocalist and that was the only sort of discernible difference. But, you know, they covered the kind of classic period of Yes, say like 1971, like from the Yes album to maybe Relayer. So just in like the period till 78, I guess going for the one is, they sound like anyway. Now they have the real John Anderson singing with them. And they've written a bunch of songs that are,

in the exact spirit of Yes. I mean, the compositions sound like they really could have been written by Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman and Chris Squire, right? That's what they sound like. And except for the fact that they don't have backing vocals that sound exactly like Chris Squire...

It sounds like a new Yes album. It sounds more Yes than Yes has sounded like Yes for a very, very long time. I mean, it's just like the bass sound, right? That Rickenbacker 4001, that bass sound, so dialed in. The drums sound like Alan White. Everything. It's just...

It's fantastic. This is... I haven't been as excited about a musical release in a while, so it's... That sounds fantastic. Yeah, yeah. You know how many times I've listened to the Yes album, how much I love Starship Troop? That is like the quintessential greatest rock song ever. Yeah. It's so well done. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wish...

Just have an ounce of talent compared to those guys. Yeah, no, nobody does. I mean, you got to check out their videos, The Band Geeks. But the album is called True. It just came out in 2024. John Anderson and The Band Geeks. Check it out. Hey, thanks, Bryce, man. That was fun. No, I had a great time. Thanks a lot, Kaiser. And thank you for having me here in Syracuse. It's just been a real pleasure. Welcome back. Come back in the winter. No.

You've been listening to the Cineca Podcast. The show is produced, recorded, engineered, edited, and mastered by me, Kaiser Guo. Support the show through Substack at www.cinecapodcast.com, where there is a growing offering of terrific original China-related writing and audio. Or email me at cinecapod at gmail.com if you've got ideas about how you can help me out. And don't forget to leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

Enormous gratitude to the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Center for East Asian Studies for supporting the show this year. Huge thanks to my guest, Bryce Whitwam, for helping me to get here to Syracuse, for making time to chat with me, and thanks to Ed Sander. I owe you a great citron meal for your help in bringing me up to speed on this topic. Ed, it's too bad we couldn't do our podcast.

our planned study tour, but we're going to do it one of these days when we can get enough sign-ups for it. Thanks to Lele for that fantastic Howdy's meal last night. That was amazing. Thank you. Thanks for listening, folks, and we'll see you next week. Take care. ... ...