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It may have taken a little while, but the Chinese Communist Party woke up to the risks of losing control of information flows on livestream platforms.
On June 22, a new regulation on the livestreaming industry was issued by Chinese authorities
Austin Li Jiaqi, China’s “lipstick King” and most famous beauty influencer, has been missing since last month from social media and livestreams.
Most trace his absence to a livestream on June 3 when Li was presented with a tank-shaped cake — it was the night before the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
Li had gained a reputation as being loyal to the Chinese Communist Party, and his livestreaming career has been launched in close cooperation with regional governments. Still, his sudden disappearance from his 170 million fans is perhaps the clearest sign that China’s massive livestreaming industry now has the full attention of Beijing's powers-that-be.
On June 22, a new regulation on the livestreaming industry was issued by China’s National Radio and Television Administration and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. This 18-point guideline lists 31 banned behaviors for livestreamers, raising the bar of entry and requirements for practices in the booming digital economy.
The regulation clearly states that live video makers “must not commit any act that subverts state power or endangers national unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity,” and a "sound credit evaluation system" will be established in accordance with this code.
Other notable points include the requirement that influencers have relevant qualifications to discuss topics such as law, finance, medicine and education. Also, livestreamers are forbidden from showing an extravagant lifestyle on screen, while the platforms are directed to refrain from promoting public figures, who have violated the law or shown “low morals,” from being able to express their opinions publicly.
Austin Li Jiaqi and the infamous "tank cake" featured on his livestream on June 3
Austin Li Jaiqi's livestream
After Austin Li’s disappearance, the direct stress on “political correctness” and “good morals” in livestreaming indicates a significant new lever of control on freedom of speech on such platforms.
Especially with so many influencers in Hong Kong, Taiwan and even foreign webcasters joining livestreaming platforms in mainland China, their opinions and behaviors were also bound to be scrutinized.
On the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to China, videos featuring patriotic sentiments and “national pride” have been circulating all over Chinese social media, and many Hong Kong artists were asked to show their “loyalty and patriotism” on video.
In fact, this business of patriotism and nationalism is not a new phenomenon, having long been an easy way to attract online audiences. “Professionally patriotic” livestreamers have long been active on various platforms, including a few notable foreign voices joining in, posting videos that praise and sometimes even exaggerate China’s “progress.”
Of course, these were not the only voices. With frustration at COVID-related policies still alive in most regions in China, livestreaming has also been a medium for people and social activists to voice their dissidence and to reveal social realities.
The release of the regulations themselves also provoked mixed views from online Chinese-language social media. There seems to be a widely shared belief that most video streamers are not “well-intentioned”, and are just “hunting" for audiences, often using shock and vulgarity to gain popularity.
The new codes would regulate the industry by setting admission requirements, and could therefore actually improve the quality of video content. Yet on the point of whether influencers should have certain qualifications to discuss certain topics, it is notable that the administration has not yet specified which qualifications are being referred to for what topic.
Many Chinese internet users are opposed to this notion of approving all content, as they think it would be “regrettable and boring” if only professionals could deliver the relevant points in such fields. Still, it is evident that the whole industry of livestreaming is now under the eye of Beijing, especially with its landscape that gives everyone a chance to voice themselves.
Didi Food, a delivery startup that struggled in East Asia, has found a growing market in Latin American cities, where appetite for home deliveries has yet to be fully satisfied.
Didi Food service in Costa Rica
SANTIAGO DE CHILE — Barranquilla and Soledad are the latest Colombian cities to join the Chinese delivery firm Didi Food's expanding market in Latin America.
The firm began exploring partners here months ago, but announced its "arrival" online in late June once it had a critical mass of eateries and partners registered with it. The application is available in other Colombian cities, as well as in Mexico, Brazil, Costa Rica, Chile and the Dominican Republic.
"We think there's an incredible business opportunity in the Barranquilla area," Catalina Arteaga, head of regional business development, told local papers on June 28.
In May, the firm began operating in the cities of Cartagena, Cúcuta and Bucaramanga, which were crucial to its expansion in Colombia.
Mexico was Didi Food's first port of call in this part of the world in 2019, when it began expanding outside China. The firm told América Economía that in just over two years of activity there, Didi Food has become the platform with the "most options, with more than 50,000 registered restaurants and 80,000 delivery partners using the app to receive orders." The firm has become the most downloaded food and drinks application in iOS and Android phones, says María Pía Lindley, head of Didi Food for Mexico, Colombia, Central America and the Caribbean.
She says the application came to Costa Rica in August 2021, growing swiftly in the capital and its environs within three months, in a post-pandemic recovery phase. The vast majority of registered businesses there, she said, were small eateries, which Lindley said Didi had helped bring online. She said that 56% of businesses on its app were using an online delivery service for the first time.
The difference between Didi Food and other food delivery applications may be its entry into the sector through transportation. In that sense, it is similar to Uber Eats, which emerged from Uber. For Didi, transportation was a way of getting to know the local market and its consumer dynamics.
Lindley says Didi launched its food delivery app in Colombia in August 2021, two years after successfully working a shared rides application there. In Chile, it also launched in 2019. The ride-hailing app "allowed us to quickly acquire a regional view of the needs and potential improvements for residents in that area, which we could implement in our expansion across the national territory," they added.
Didi Ride thus allowed Didi Food to make a "soft landing" in Santiago in April 2022. Lindley says that in any location, the right density is needed to ensure the best experience for all sides involved with its service — customers, delivery partners and restaurants. She said Didi wants to provide the same service and choices in new locations as it does in established markets like Mexico or Brazil.
The firm cites the absence of a service fee for users as one of its advantages, alongside a lower-than-average fee charged to restaurants. It says it helps its drivers by easing and optimizing their access to and use of its application.
Home delivery workers preparing their orders outside a supermarket in Cali, Colombia
Nano Calvo/VW Pics/Zuma
The original taxi firm (Didi Chuxing) began in February 2015 with the backing of Alibaba, an online retail giant. By May that year, it was operating in 360 Chinese cities and coordinating a million trips a day. The firm launched Didi Food in April 2017, though its expansion in Asia has not always been smooth. In Japan, it shut down in April 2022, two years after its arrival there. Part of the problem in Asia, including in China, is existing stiff competition from other firms like Meituan, Ele.me, and even foreign brands like Deliveroo or Grab.
So expanding into markets further afield made sense. In Chile, it has a "big potential," says Salvador Barros, a co-founder of Kipp, a Chilean tech and logistics consultancy.
Barros said Didi Food now had a vast turnover, which aided efficiency in its services. In time, he said, it could really compete with firms like Uber Eats.
Rocío Franco, a logistics analyst with consultants Euromonitor International, says several factors aid this sector in Latin America. Firstly, he said, food deliveries remained quite cheap here, compared to regions like Europe or North America. Early in the pandemic, Euromonitor saw Latin America as the fastest growing region for deliveries, after the Asia-Pacific region. A report it published in May 2022 found the entire home delivery sector in Latin America to have raked in over U.S. $16.2 billion in 2021, almost 13% more than in 2020. The biggest growth was in Chile and Brazil.
A challenge in any new market is to win customer confidence. In Barranquilla and Soledad, the firm is financing 30-50% discounts on different types of orders for a limited period after its launch. Daniel Serra says intermittent offers and constant, competitive prices are likely to become Didi Food's hallmarks.
Of course, other firms, like Rappi, the Brazilian iFood, Glovo, Uber Eats and others, follow similar principles.
So is the home delivery market in Latin America saturated, or is there room for more firms?
Our consultants said there was room, especially if firms concentrate less on the region's vast capital cities and move into smaller cities where home deliveries had yet to be fully developed.
In Didi's case, linking its cab and food delivery services may serve it well and optimize use of resources. Another factor in its favor is timing, thanks to a pandemic-induced increase in remote work.
Once the Latin American home delivery market matures, says Barros, profitability may fall but it will stabilize. In that case, he says, Didi Food's cost-cutting efficiency may become its big advantage over competitors.
Didi Food, a delivery startup that struggled in East Asia, has found a growing market in Latin American cities, where appetite for home deliveries has yet to be fully satisfied.
"Do you realize that this changes everything for me?"
Central to the tragic absurdity of this war is the question of language. Vladimir Putin has repeated that protecting ethnic Russians and the Russian-speaking populations of Ukraine was a driving motivation for his invasion.
Yet one month on, a quick look at the map shows that many of the worst-hit cities are those where Russian is the predominant language: Kharkiv, Odesa, Kherson.
Then there is Mariupol, under siege and symbol of Putin’s cruelty. In the largest city on the Azov Sea, with a population of half a million people, Ukrainians make up slightly less than half of the city's population, and Mariupol's second-largest national ethnicity is Russians. As of 2001, when the last census was conducted, 89.5% of the city's population identified Russian as their mother tongue.
Between 2018 and 2019, I spent several months in Mariupol. It is a rugged but beautiful city dotted with Soviet-era architecture, featuring wide avenues and hillside parks, and an extensive industrial zone stretching along the shoreline. There was a vibrant youth culture and art scene, with students developing projects to turn their city into a regional cultural center with an international photography festival.
There were also many offices of international NGOs and human rights organizations, a consequence of the fact that Mariupol was the last major city before entering the occupied zone of Donbas. Many natives of the contested regions of Luhansk and Donetsk had moved there, taking jobs in restaurants and hospitals. I had fond memories of the welcoming from locals who were quicker to smile than in some other parts of Ukraine. All of this is gone.
According to the latest data from the local authorities, 80% of the port city has been destroyed by Russian bombs, artillery fire and missile attacks, with particularly egregious targeting of civilians, including a maternity hospital, a theater where more than 1,000 people had taken shelter and a school where some 400 others were hiding.
The official civilian death toll of Mariupol is estimated at more than 3,000. There are no language or ethnic-based statistics of the victims, but it’s likely the majority were Russian speakers.
So let’s be clear, Putin is bombing the very people he has claimed to want to rescue.
Putin’s Public Enemy No. 1, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is a mother-tongue Russian speaker who’d made a successful acting and comedy career in Russian-language broadcasting, having extensively toured Russian cities for years.
Rescuers carry a person injured during a shelling by Russian troops of Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine.
Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy/Ukrinform via ZUMA Press Wire
Yes, the official language of Ukraine is Ukrainian, and a 2019 law aimed to ensure that it is used in public discourse, but no one has ever sought to abolish the Russian language in everyday life. In none of the cities that are now being bombed by the Russian army to supposedly liberate them has the Russian language been suppressed or have the Russian-speaking population been discriminated against.
Sociologist Mikhail Mishchenko explains that studies have found that the vast majority of Ukrainians don’t consider language a political issue. For reasons of history, culture and the similarities of the two languages, Ukraine is effectively a bilingual nation.
"The overwhelming majority of the population speaks both languages, Russian and Ukrainian,” Mishchenko explains. “Those who say they understand Russian poorly and have difficulty communicating in it are just over 4% percent. Approximately the same number of people say the same about Ukrainian.”
In general, there is no problem of communication and understanding. Often there will be conversations where one person speaks Ukrainian, and the other responds in Russian. Geographically, the Russian language is more dominant in the eastern and central parts of Ukraine, and Ukrainian in the west.
Like most central Ukrainians I am perfectly bilingual: for me, Ukrainian and Russian are both native languages that I have used since childhood in Kyiv. My generation grew up on Russian rock, post-Soviet cinema, and translations of foreign literature into Russian. I communicate in Russian with my sister, and with my mother and daughter in Ukrainian. I write professionally in three languages: Ukrainian, Russian and English, and can also speak Polish, French, and a bit Japanese. My mother taught me that the more languages I know the more human I am.
At the same time, I am not Russian — nor British or Polish. I am Ukrainian. Ours is a nation with a long history and culture of its own, which has always included a multi-ethnic population: Russians, Belarusians, Moldovans, Crimean Tatars, Bulgarians, Romanians, Hungarians, Poles, Jews, Greeks. We all, they all, have found our place on Ukrainian soil. We speak different languages, pray in different churches, we have different traditions, clothes, and cuisine.
Like in other countries, these differences have been the source of conflict in our past. But it is who we are and will always be, and real progress has been made over the past three decades to embrace our multitudes. Our Jewish, Russian-speaking president is the most visible proof of that — and is in fact part of what our soldiers are fighting for.
Many in Moscow were convinced that Russian troops would be welcomed in Ukraine as liberating heroes by Russian speakers. Instead, young soldiers are forced to shoot at people who scream in their native language.
Starving people ina street of Kharkiv in 1933, during the famine
Diocesan Archive of Vienna (Diözesanarchiv Wien)/BA Innitzer
Putin has tried to rally the troops by warning that in Ukraine a “genocide” of ethnic Russians is being carried out by a government that must be “de-nazified.”
These are, of course, words with specific definitions that carry the full weight of history. The Ukrainian people know what genocide is not from books. In my hometown of Kyiv, German soldiers massacred Jews en masse. My grandfather survived the Buchenwald concentration camp, liberated by the U.S. army. My great-grandmother, who died at the age of 95, survived the 1932-33 famine when the Red Army carried out the genocide of the Ukrainian middle class, and her sister disappeared in the camps of Siberia, convicted for defying rationing to try to feed her children during the famine.
On Tuesday, came a notable report of one of the latest civilian deaths in the besieged Russian-speaking city of Kharkiv: a 96-year-old had been killed when shelling hit his apartment building. The victim’s name was Boris Romanchenko; he had survived Buchenwald and two other Nazi concentration camps during World War II. As President Zelensky noted: Hitler didn’t manage to kill him, but Putin did.
Genocide has returned to Ukraine, from Kharkiv to Kherson to Mariupol, as Vladimir Putin had warned. But it is his own genocide against the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine.