A livestream of Li Jiaqi, one of China's biggest internet celebrities with over 64 million followers, ended abruptly on Friday. He hasn’t been seen or heard from since then, fuelling rumours that he may have been detained by the Chinese government
Beauty influence Li Jiaqi presented a cake that resembled a tank, a sensitive symbol to show on the eve of the 33rd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Taobao
A livestream of Li Jiaqi, one of China's biggest internet celebrities with over 64 million followers, ended abruptly on Friday. He hasn’t been seen or heard from since then, fuelling rumours that he may have been detained by the Chinese government.
Who is Li Jiaqi and why would the government be interested in detaining him, let’s find out:
Who is Li Jiaqi and why is he famous? Li Jiaqi or the Lipstick King is one of China's biggest internet influencers with over 64 million followers on live stream platform Taobao Live.
According to South China Morning Post, Li gained popularity since he started live-streaming on Taobao in 2017. The 30-year-old now has a net worth of between $1-5 million, and he made it onto the Hurun China Under 30s To Watch 2019 list.
The young ‘beauty influencer’ came to be known as the ‘lipstick king’ after he set a Guinness record for “the most lipstick applications to models in 30 seconds”, putting lipstick on four different models in just 30 seconds in 2019. His incredible selling skills helped him sell 15,000 lipsticks in just five minutes in 2018.
Unlike other beauty bloggers, Li insists on trying lipsticks on his lips instead of on his arms. He once tried 380 different lipsticks in a seven-hour livestream.
According to the SCMP report, Li attracted an audience of more than 36 million on China’s Singles’ Day. He managed to generate more $145 million in sales for Alibaba.
What happened to the lipstick king?
All was well until Friday evening when Li was streaming his show with his co-host. The livestream ended abruptly when Li showed a vanilla cake that resembled a tank with Oreos for wheels and a wafer pipe for the cannon. Incidentally, Li’s show was on 3 June, on the eve of the 33rd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
The date, a taboo topic in China, is commemorated around the world with candlelight vigils. On the fateful day in 1989, several tanks lined up to enter Tiananmen Square, where the military fired at thousands of pro-democracy activists.
Even though there is no way to know how many people were killed that day, it is estimated that about 3,000 people died.
Soon after Li presented the cake to his audience, his livestream was cut off.
According to a CNN report, shortly after his livestream was cut, Li told his 50 million followers on Weibo that his team was fixing a "technical glitch" and asked them to "wait for a moment."
The influencer apologised two hours later in another post that the live broadcast could no longer resume that evening due to "a failure of our internal equipment."
"Everybody please go to bed early. We will bring you the products that have not been broadcast (tonight) in future livestreams," he wrote.
He didn’t reappear for a livestream after that. On Sunday, Li failed to show up for another scheduled show, which further fuelled speculation over his whereabouts.
The discussion over Li’s disappearance went on till Monday, when China’s censorship army caught up and a search for Li's name no longer returned relevant results on Taobao.
During the two days after his disappearance, several users were confused as to why a tank would be considered offensive while others advised them to exercise caution.
While some believe Li was trying to make a political statement, others argued that he was possibly among those who didn't know about the Tiananmen Square massacre. Li had never expressed any political opinions in the past.
The questions are many that will hopefully be answered upon Li’s return, but for now the incident has opened a dark chapter in history to several Chinese citizens who were so far unaware of the Tiananmen Square massacre. With inputs from agencies
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