Top Chinese social media influencer Li Jiaqi, known as the “Lipstick King” because he once managed to sell 15,000 units of lipstick in five minutes flat during a livestream performance, was evidently “disappeared” by the tyrannical Chinese government on Friday after he pointed his webcam at a cake that looked like a tank, one day before the 33rd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Li, 30, spent the past five years building an audience of over 64 million followers on a platform called Taobao Live, where he is frequently hailed as the most popular streamer. He mostly hawks beauty products, which he sometimes demonstrates on models, sometimes on himself. He is said to be worth up to five million dollars, a fortune he amassed by moving more than $145 million worth of products for e-commerce giant Alibaba.
Billionaire Alibaba founder Jack Ma once humorously challenged Li to a contest to see could sell more lipstick during China’s annual “Double Eleven” online shopping extravaganza. Li won.
Li is, in short, a very big deal on the Chinese Internet — and he has been happy to help out with the authoritarian government’s nationalist agenda, urging his followers to trust and purchase “made in China” products. It was therefore a bit of a surprise when his Internet career literally faded to black on Friday because he showed a novelty cake to his audience.
There was no sign that Li intended to send any coded political messages on his Friday show. He was in the process of hawking snack food to his viewers when he showed off a cake that looked vaguely like a tank, with Oreo cookie wheels and a wafer gun barrel.
Li presented this cake the day before the anniversary of Tiananmen Square, an atrocity the Chinese Communist Party is determined to erase from history. Communist forces murdered thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators on that day. The regime in Beijing is using all of its totalitarian power to eliminate the memory of the dead.
The most renowned image to emerge from Tiananmen Square was “Tank Man,” a photo of a lone, nondescript man armed with nothing but plastic shopping bags staring down a column of Chinese tanks.
A Chinese man stands alone to block a line of tanks heading east on Beijing’s Cangan Blvd. in Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989. (AP Photo/Jeff Widener)
The regime apparently cannot handle even the most tangential reference to the courage of Tank Man and the slaughter he was unable to prevent because Li’s broadcast was abruptly terminated soon after displaying the cake and he did not return over the weekend, even though a major online shopping season is in progress. His profile has been erased from Taobao.
The BBC pointed out the confusion of Li’s audience, which does not understand the significance of the tank because Communist censors prevent them from learning anything about Tiananmen Square:
“What does the tank mean?” a confused viewer asked.
Another said: “What could possibly be the wrong thing to say while selling snacks?”
…
Those late to the discussion are now asking: “What was the shape of that cake? Can anyone PM [private message] me? I searched a lot but still failed to know the answer.”
A commentator retorted: “Our own account will be in trouble just from us PM-ing you the photo. Who would dare to do it?”
Some of Li’s fans suggested the young influencer himself was ignorant of Tiananmen history and had no idea why the tank might be a controversial symbol around June 4. A few wondered if the tank cake was slipped to him by competitors as a prank to get him blacklisted. The BBC found that theory somewhat plausible as the world of Chinese Internet sales is extremely competitive and a few other top streamers were recently ruined by suspiciously-timed tax scandals.
The UK Guardian on Thursday quoted “Chinese entertainment insiders” who said an “inter-company investigation” is underway into the tank cake incident.
Dr. Luqiu Luwei of Hong Kong Baptist University told the Guardian the craven regime in Beijing might have made a mistake by censoring an Internet personality with such a huge following among young Chinese because suddenly they all want to know what happened at Tiananmen Square. Social media users have already dubbed this unexpected consequence the “Li Jiaqi Paradox.”
Another theory, floated by Foreign Policy on Wednesday, is that China was looking for an excuse to crack down on Li because the regime is growing increasingly homophobic as its population crisis deepens.
“Li does not discuss his personal life, save for his five Bichon Frises [his dogs]. But in his public persona – a man selling feminine beauty products to an audience he addresses as ‘sisters’ – he operates in an established but fragile space for entertainers who don’t conform to conventional masculinity,” Foreign Policy noted.