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J Transcultural Comm 2022; 2(1): 24–50
Lei Wang*
Game Playing in the Platform Society: A
Cultural-Political Economy Analysis of the
Live Streaming Industry in China
https://doi.org/10.1515/jtc-2022-0005
Published online December 1, 2022
Abstract: With the continuing innovation of digital technologies and mobile
multimedia terminals, the live steaming industry still has its relatively enormous
market share in China. However, the aura of the platform profit-making period
seems to glow faintly after 2016, the year regarded as “the booming year of the
Chinese live streaming industry”. As the user bonus fades, the growth of the online
live broadcasting industry becomes stable, and the industry development returns
to rationality. This work poses several questions: in what ways can the survived
platforms move forward to seek profits? What type of potential transformations
have happened during the monetization for capital accumulation in the digital
economy blended with diverse cultures? How can the labor rights of common
people be ensured among the persistent chess-play in the virtual live streaming
world? By jumping out from techno-optimistic research rhetoric and orthodox
political economy discourse, this study stems from a macroscopic perspective of
cultural political economy (CPE) with systematical consideration of broader
functional factors. Netnography, online in-depth interview, and walkthrough
qualitative methods are also conducted to analyze the transformation development in China’s live streaming industry. Results disclose that a gameplay still
exists at the core of the dystopian cyberspace, especially residing among different
context factors in the platform society, and this academic disclosure can be viewed
from cultural and political economy dimension.
Keywords: cultural political economy, live streaming, capitalization, monetization, consumption culture
*Corresponding author: Lei Wang, Communication University of China, Beijing, China,
E-mail: [email protected]. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9870-7730
Open Access. © 2022 Lei Wang, published by De Gruyter.
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This work is licensed under the
Game Playing in the Platform Society
25
1 Introduction
With the continuing innovation of digital technologies and mobile multimedia
terminals, China’s live streaming, after Blog, SNS, Weibo, and WeChat, has
constantly developed and attracted a considerable number of netizens and a large
amount of capital since 2016, the year regarded as “the booming year of the
Chinese live streaming industry”. Almost half of Chinese Internet users (more than
710 million) watch live streaming sites, such as Douyu, Huya, Zhanqi, Panda, 6. cn,
and Kugou. In 2017, China’s live streaming industry more than doubled in size,
with revenues of approximately $3bn according to iResearch report, which is an
authoritative internet data provider with almost 9 years of experience in China.
More than 100 companies now offer the service of providing a platform for performers in exchange for their earnings. Most performances on a variety of broadcast platforms are associated with “lifecasting”, while others either come from
professional incubators or originate from available media programs.
After the skyrocketing development, the aura of the platform profit-making
period seems to glow faintly in the past two years. In July 2016, 4313 online
showrooms were forced to shut down because they “promote obscenity, violence,
abet crime, and damage social morality”. According to the 43rd China Internet
Network Information Center report1, the scale of live streaming users had reached
397 million before the end of December 2018, which demonstrated a decrease of
more than 25 million people compared with the number from last year. From then
on, the whole industry development has returned to rationality and faced a
reshuffle as the user bonus fades, and the scale growth has become stable.
Considering the current live streaming growth condition, many scholars and industrial professionals contend with the vision that a potential transformation
exists at the core of the dystopian cyberspace in China. This notion means that
capital in the Chinese live streaming industry is accumulated and reconstructed in
different ways rather than mostly through virtual gifting and advertising in the
past. The whole live streaming system seems like an arena accommodating
different factors with different strengths and power. For example, the e-commerce
live streaming industry showed meteoric growth in digital economy, especially
Taobao, the biggest B2C e-commerce platform in China, which dominated the
market with $28 billion in sales in 20192 (the number is projected to double in 2020
because of the government’s support on e-commerce during the COVID-19
1 The 43rd China Internet Network Information Center Report: online broadcast [EB/OL]. (2019-02-28).
https://tech.sina.com.cn/i/2019-02-28/doc-ihsxncvf8299486.shtml.
2 Rita Yang, Hans Tung, Is Live Streaming the New Frontier of Ecommerce? [EB/OL]. (2020-07-23).
https://www.ggvc.com/insights/is-live-streaming-the-new-frontier-of-ecommerce/.
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L. Wang
lockdown period). Nevertheless, several political policies and laws have been
enacted in successions, for instance, Provisions on the Administration of Internet
Live-Streaming Services released in 2016, Guidance on Strengthening Supervision
of Online Live Broadcast Marketing Activities initially released in 2020, and some
other related laws like Advertisement Law and Anti-unfair Competition Law, to
progressively regulate various illegal or edge-ball playing speeches and behaviors
on live streaming platforms, like adventurous activities, rumor dissemination,
feudal communication, fake produce sale, prostitution and violence, so on and so
forth. Thus, the domestic video platform industry is better to be illustrated in the
integral environment embedded with plenty of functional factors, including political, economic, cultural, technological and social elements, with both empirical
and critical/cultural studies.
2 Previous Studies and Research Focus
Web broadcast, which originated from traditional TV stations, is regarded as “Live
Web Casting” or “Live Streaming”. Across live streaming platforms, users have
generated onscreen performances, which include game play, cooking, painting,
karaoke, and “social eating” (Recktenwald & Du, 2017). The types of webcasts
include entertainment, game, e-commerce, and professional live streaming forms
in China.
The general existing Chinese articles associated with China’s live streaming
can be mainly divided into several study directions sorted out here: live streaming
industrial analysis (Liao & Yang, 2019); language narratives in news web broadcast
(Luo & Xu, 2019); digital ethics and law regulations related to copyrights in live
streaming (Gao, 2019; Liu & Huang, 2019); live streamers’ motivations and demands (Wang & Xie, 2019); the analysis of webcast effects (Yang, 2019); the critical/cultural analysis of live broadcast in China (Xu & Zhang, 2019; Yao & Chen,
2019). With regard to the related English academic materials, some research pertains to comparative studies on live broadcast in North America, Europe, and Asia
(Lu et al., 2018; Recktenwald & Du, 2016); China’s live streaming industry (Cunnigham et al., 2019); consumption motivations and behaviors in live streaming
(Li et al., 2018); and the critical/cultural analysis of China’s live streaming
monetization (Zhang et al., 2019; Zou, 2018).
A majority of current materials conform to Lasswell’s 5W model path inclined
to empirical research methods, and some debates around participatory culture,
user-generated content, and collaborative innovation are often over-optimistic
(Fuchs & Fisher, 2015: 4), while there are still big spaces waited for being explored
in depth, although some critical/cultural studies have been conducted. Moreover,
Game Playing in the Platform Society
27
research about the Chinese online live streaming industry is scarce, even in this
post-epidemic era. On this basis, this work aims to fill up the blank of current
studies with regard to China’s live streaming world in two dimensions (critical/
cultural studies and industrial analysis) for an in-depth understanding of the
ongoing transformations like a game-playing that happened in the webcast territory. During the dynamic zero-sum gaming environment in live streaming industry
of China, the main research questions of this article include three aspects:
(1) After the earlier huge profit-making period, in what ways will the existing or
survived live streaming platforms move forward to seek profits?
(2) What types of potential transformations have happened during the monetization for capital accumulation in the digital economy associated with diverse
cultures?
(3) How can the labour rights of the common people be ensured with the large
population Internet penetration rate in the virtual live streaming world?
Industrial transformations are connected with the surrounded environment
including policies, capitals and cultures, and also with people or labour situated
inside. The three aspects of questions above are linked with each other. After
exploring and analyzing cultural political economy of the live streaming industry
in China, some functional factors contributing to the industrial transformation in
these years can be analized in depth, and then, the labour rights can also not be
ignored, as people and environment are connected with each other. In sum, by
jumping out from techno-optimistic research rhetoric and an orthox political
economy discourse, this study adopts a macroscopic perspective of a cultural and
political economy, supplementing in-depth interview with a qualitative method to
analyze the transformation development that emerged in China’s live streaming
industry. This work discloses that a game-playing mechanism still exists at the core
of dystopian cyberspace, where the industry accommodates plenty of political,
economic and cultural factors that cooperate or compete with each other.
3 Explanatory Frameworks
Political economy is particularly interested in acknowledging “power” as
embedded in markets and institutions (Mosco, 1999, p. 104). Power relations are
negotiated among different actors in media landscape, and they include global
and local capital, government and state agencies, and workers in the media area
(Ferrer-Roca, 2020). In the theoretical framework, the political economy of
communication studies have recalled Marxism since the published article
“Blindspot of Western Marxism” (Smythe, 1977), which call upon the public to
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L. Wang
focus on the complex role of communications in capitalism. Meanwhile, an
increasing number of political-economic scholars worldwide are inclined to a
common viewpoint that the dark side of capitalism, such as income gap between
the rich and the poor, widespread free labour without adequate life guarantee,
deep penetration of neoliberalism, and global capitalist crisis on the global scale,
is now recognized worldwide within both the “east” and “west” territories (Fuchs &
Mosco, 2012).
Although the political economy dimension can make up for the shortage of
critical analysis in many existing empirical studies, it does not conflict with cultural interpretations in this media convergence era. Inspired by the Marxian
critique of the political economy, the cultural political economy (CPE) not only
critically accepts methods of the orthodox political economy, but also emphasizes
the contextuality and historicity of all claims (Jessop & Oosterlynck, 2008), especially those converged with platform studies (Poell et al., 2019). They pay attention
to exploring how platforms bring together different human and non-human actors,
and transforming culture production, distribution and circulation with the logic of
the platform economy to build a new ecosystem (van Dijck et al., 2018).
Following the analysis routes provided by the viewpoint of the cultural political economy, this paper will systematically adopt critical and cultural theoretical perspectives by referring to the current new media fields in China: (1) While
criticizing the capital aspect, such as “platform capitalism” (Srnicek, 2017), the
study is also trying to explore context factors which may affect the integral and
dynamic platform ambience. Here the “platform” refers to a mode of sociotechnical intermediary and business arrangement that is merged into a wider
process of capitalization—at the centre of the critical analysis of digital economic
circulation (Langley & Leyshon, 2017). In the meanwhile, platforms can also
privilege flows of data by algorithmic sorting, and users’ cultural production and
consumption are essential for constructing the platform ecology. (2) While criticizing the commodity side, such as the “audience commodity” (Smythe, 1981), the
“free-lunch” content is capable of shaping the communicative practices of platform users. Dallas Smythe pointed out that audiences are the main commodity
which can be sold to advertisers, and labour of audience is the main product of
mass media. When it comes to the digital platform age, the proliferation of digital
technologies completely immerse audiences in a hyper-commercial environment
(Dolber, 2016), and this kind of commercialization or monetization becomes even
more fierce and severe, as digital technology has enabled media producers and
marketers to better quantify the value of audience labour than they had been in the
broadcasting era. Christian Fuchs (2012) illustrates how this process of exploitation
works in the digital environment. van Dijck et al. (2018) and Plantin (2017) pointed
out that commodification of users’ participation exploits the immaterial labour
Game Playing in the Platform Society
29
of users, creates precariousness and shifts economic power from traditional institutions, although it democratizes the market to some extent. In the long run,
especially in the era of convergence media and even smart media when things are
all going through mediated transformation, contents sourced from this process
have more or fewer implications on users directly or potentially. (3) While criticizing the labour aspect, such as “immaterial labour” (Lazzarato 1996; Terranova,
2004), “precariat” (Standing, 2011; Graham et al., 2017), “digital labour” (Scholz,
2017), “unpaid labour” (Fuchs, 2010), “free labour” (Terranova, 2000), “network
labour” (Qiu, 2009), and “iSlave” (Qiu, 2017), there are also interactions and
communication among labours, which largely form network cultural environment
seducing more labour force to join in the drastic webcast area.
The three critical/cultural theoretical perspectives illustrated above are
interrelated with each other. While these three theoretical dimensions pay great
attention to power differences and class inequality, they also tend to explore
cultural force acting within this fierce and competitive power arena. Given that the
process of the “socialist market economy” already started in the late 1970s in
China, conducting some critical/cultural studies around the relationship between
communication and society would be wise for ensuring the healthy movement of
technology and protection systems established for the general public. Furthermore, the research is mainly founded on these three theoretical angles as a critical/
cultural framework for an in-depth understanding of China’s live streaming
industry.
4 Research Design
4.1 Research Methodology
This study is mainly focused on critical/cultural thoughts sourced from cultural
politic economy (CPE). Nevertheless, some qualitative investigations, such netnography, online interviews, and walkthrough methods, are applied to supplement clear theoretical illustrations with an in-depth understanding of online users’
psychological feelings and satisfactions. This study supplements the primary
critical/cultural analysis with participatory observation and in-depth online
interview for investigating the true China’s live streaming world and understanding online users’ psychological feelings and satisfactions. The combination
of netnography and online interviews integrated online and offline studies to
achieve great consistency in various processes, such as data collection and analysis (Sherry, 1990). The combination of these qualitative methods is helpful in
achieving a comprehensive and accurate research process (Glaser & Strauss, 1967).
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L. Wang
Netnography can be regarded as ethnography adapted to the study of online
communities. Netnography can be also referred to virtual ethnography, which is the
process of conducting and constructing an ethnography by using the virtual online
environment as the site of research (Evans, 2010), and it is provided for field
participation and observation (Hine, 2000). The approach seems faster, simpler, and
less expensive than traditional ethnography and more naturalistic and unobtrusive
than focus groups or interviews (Kozinets, 2002). Netnography provides researchers
with a window into naturally occurring behaviors, thereby offering valuable opportunities for exploring relationships between researchers and online users. Morton
(2001) provided two ways of conducting ethnography online—distanced or involved,
and Schwara (1999) extended the meaning of the term. Distanced research is
composed of the evaluation of sources, such as texts, images, or emotions, and the
observation of (but not participation in) social interactions in networks. Communicative research can lead to the subjectivity of the actors being revealed (Kendall,
1999) and enables researchers to theoretically understand the identity performance
of the user and the significance of the interactions that have occurred (Heidegger,
1996). The participant observations were conducted for more than 2 years ranging
from September 2018 to June 2021 to give the author adequate time to understand the
operational patterns, profit-earning models, and online interactions of various live
streaming platforms. As China’s live streaming industry had stepped into the stable
development stage leaving less than 100 authorized platforms by the end of 20183,
several major APP platforms were selected for self-experiences, such as Inke, YY Live,
Huajiao, Kuaishou, and Douyin (the equivalent of TikTok in the US), to receive firsthand materials and feelings from online engagement. The field work can be divided
into two phases: first, starting from September 2018, the author participated in
Huajiao platform as an outsider, observing the integral live streaming operations,
such as platform functions and users’ comments; second, from May 2019 to June 2021,
the author and a recruited student joined several online fan groups to approach some
live anchors who may have many followers. In this way, we can get to know more
details about the platforms’ salary system, profit allocation and streamers’ daily lives.
The walkthrough method is an approach that enables researchers to identify
an app’s context and highlight the vision, its operating model, and governance
that forms a set of expectations for ideal use (Light et al., 2018). We walked through
the app’s registration, daily use, functional selection, social interaction, and recreation finding. The method allowed for recognition of the embedded cultural
values in the app’s features and functions and also provides a foundational
analysis of the app. It could be combined with online interviews to gain further
3 Tendency of China’s live-streaming industry [EB/OL]. (2019-01-10). https://baijiahao.baidu.
com/s?id=1622236965729544229&wfr=spider&for=pc.
Game Playing in the Platform Society
31
insights into users’ application and appropriation of the app technology to suit
their purposes (Light et al., 2018). In this way, app users’ self-expression, relationships, and interactions could be extensively explored.
Apart from deep participation and observation methods used above, the study
also adopted online interviews as a methodological supplement. Broadcasters (n = 8)
and audience users (n = 5) were selected on the basis of snowball sampling, and the
selection of the interviewees depended on two factors: time length and use frequency
on live streaming platforms. Given that, this study aims to explore the phenomena
that have not been extensively described before through an in-depth interview. It
pays attention to the richness of data contained in the sampling process, instead of
just lingering on the number of samples. The interviewing time was approximately
2–2.5 h for each person, and the interview questions were prepared on an interviewing outline in advance. All interviews were smooth and comfortable. No one left
or gave up the interview. The subjects were classified according to the defined topics,
and the names of the interviewees were anonymous to ensure the legal protection of
personal privacy. The data achieved from the interview were further analyzed to
complement the main critical/cultural analysis.
4.2 Research Objective
The research objective covers two areas: main live streaming platforms and platform users (including broadcasters and audience users). The main platforms
include three different types: entertainment type—Douyin, Kuaishou, Huajiao;
Game type—Douyu; e-commerce type—Taobao. The interviewed platform users
include eight broadcasters and five users, and all of them at least have two-year
live streaming experience. For instance, two interviewees are regarded as Wang
Hong or online celebrity (Tse et al., 2018) because each person has more than
100,000 followers in the virtual world. Another six interviewees have played as
video hosts on webcasting platforms for more than three years. The remaining five
people can be considered heavy users who use live streaming platforms for more
than 7 h per day. Their rough demographic features are listed as follows:
5 Capital Gameplay and Video Culture
China’s live streaming industry has undergone three phases: a huge profit-making
phase, a legitimate adjustment phase, and an industrial transformation phase. The
embryonic form of Webcast can be traced back to Podcast in 2008, and a variety of live
streaming platforms were developed at an astonishing speed around 2016. During
32
L. Wang
ID
Gender
Age
Years of
use
P
P
P
P
P
P
P
P
P
P
P
P
P
M
F
F
F
M
M
F
M
F
F
F
M
M
.
.
.
Has streamed
themselves
Live streaming
platform
Province/Autonomous
region/Municipality
in China
Yes
Yes
No
No
No
No
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Douyu
Taobao
Douyu
Taobao
Taobao
Dianping
Taobao
Taobao
Taobao
Huajiao
Douyin
Kuaishou
Huajiao
Shanghai
Shanghai
Beijing
Sichuan
Jilin
Shanxi
Zhejiang
Beijing
Tianjin
Shanghai
Hunan
Shenzhen
Hebei
that period, many online hosts became online celebrities from original grassroots,
earned a large sum of money from self-performances on computer or mobile phone
screens via virtual gifts (Li et al., 2018). That can be deemed as a unique characteristic
of Chinese live streaming compared with the other countries’ platforms with the same
video-showing functions. In the second phase, fierce competitions happened among
diverse live streaming platforms, and each of them was struggling for additional
capital and flows. Some platforms were driven into distorted trails, where they were
filled with pornography, violence, seductive content, immoral words and fake news
to realize maximum monetization. From then on, a series of governmental policies
have been gradually enacted to maintain the healthy development of the live
streaming industry in China. After legitimate adjustment, the current webcasting
industry is stably moving forward with some transformations on many platforms that
have experienced capital reorganizations and financial competitions, and some
platforms are embedded in people’s daily cultural lives like Douyin and KuaiShou.
From the cheerful applause with great jubilation for the emergence of new Social
Media Entertainment (SME: Cunningham & Craig, 2019), the existed platforms’
convergence with the political economy and video culture cannot be ignored.
5.1 Capitalization and Contextualization Feature of the
Platforms
In the field of political and economic communication, the main meaning of
“capital” is not money or investment capability, but a type of social relationship—
Game Playing in the Platform Society
33
the class relationship between labour and capital. David Harvey’s (2007) analysis
in his book A Brief History of Neoliberalism indicated that the process of “capitalism” is not only the self-protection and re-expansion of the current beneficial
owner but also the maintenance of the existing power relationship and organization. Capitalism demands that firms constantly seek out new avenues for profit,
new markets, new commodities, and new means of exploitation (Srnicek, 2017,
p. 3). This notion means that capital always find strategies to maximize itself. The
nature of the transformation is not far from capital accumulation regardless of the
forms of social media platforms. With the advancement of information techniques
and network system, a wave of “platformization” (Bucher & Helmond, 2018)
sweeps the world. The conception of “platformization” is associated with “how the
political economy of the cultural industries changes through platformation,
affecting the production, distribution, and circulation of cultural content”
(Nieborg & Poell, 2018, p. 4275). Castells (2000, p. 190) noticed that the network has
brought about great reform transiting from “quantity production” to “flexible production” with the coming of a “Post-Fordism” age. When many people acclaim for
the arrival of sharing economy and digital democracy, the emergence of platform
capitalism cannot be ignored. Specifically, the way of capital accumulation is
becoming highly flexible with the changes of media and social ecology. The
Internet platforms reorganize labour relations in flexible and multiple ways to a
certain extent. Specifically, some live streaming platforms greatly exploit labours’
scattered time and resources, inducing them to engage in different types of parttime or even full-time activities without any protection from commercial contracts.
This notion means that many webcast business companies shift the committed
cost onto the shoulders of public participants.
The monetization model of Chinese live streaming is normally about virtual
gift-giving, which is in the form of pictographs, such as flowers, yachts, and
hearts paid by streamers and received by hosts who give real-time performances.
Apart from initial virtual gift-giving, e-commerce live broadcast launched around
2018 can also be regarded as one of the most prominent embodiment of contextualization. “Contextualization” means that with the development of mobile terminals, the Internet, the Internet of things and live broadcasting technology, online
and offline communication can achieve a face-to-face interaction. With a strong
sense of participation, both parties are in the same scene and environment
(Zou et al., 2020). Customers and anchors can interact in real time. A realistic
and vivid context is better than traditional texts and graphics, and different
live streaming forms can be interconvertible. The gifts are cash-convertible; hence,
the final revenue can be split between the platform and the live hosts. When
34
L. Wang
some hosts become Wang Hong through congregating many fans, they turn the
traffic flows into revenues by stepping into e-commerce area for high profits. For
instance, a popular mukbang (Chibo 吃播) Mizijun (密子君) has her own
e-commerce stores earning over 5 million Yuan (equal to almost 710 thousand
US dollars) per year. Although those online celebrities have made astonishing
profits in these years, a large number of content creators still face great challenge.
However, when the webcast consumption environment is largely formed, there are
still more and more streamers who both live domestically and exotically enter this
video culture era. One of the interviewees P4 told her live streaming experience on
Xiaohongshu platform in the US. She has lived in New York for nearly 5 years. She
said that her audiences like her telling some exotic studying and living news, and
this interaction can enrich the emotions between the streamer and viewers, and
even can make contribution to participants’ consumption behaviors online. In
particular, this interviewee also pointed out transcultural communication is
inclined to increase online connection and consumption. Like P4 said, “when
I stayed overseas, I would like to share some personal experiences of living in a
foreign country, and my audience in live streaming platform were likely to give
enthusiastic responses and even follow my suggestions to make more purchase
online. But, when I go back to my hometown in China, it is apparent to see that the
viewers’ enthusiasms of interaction are falling down day by day.”
According to the iiMedia Research Report, over 70% of we-media people have
salaries of less than 5000 yuan (about 715 US dollars) per month4, which cannot
offer them roughly decent lives in the contemporary society. At a press conference
for the third session of the 13th National People’s Congress, Premier Li Keqiang
stressed that China has “600 million low- and middle-income people, and their
average monthly income is only about 1,000 yuan”5. Two interviewees expressed
their living conditions as follows:
In the earlier platform bonus period, I earned much more money in comparison with my
current income, as every big live streaming platform has increased their profit-sharing proportion. (P13)
In the earlier days, we could get followers and virtual gifts just through randomly displaying
our daily common lives. But, nowadays, we need to make efforts to show various creative
contents in order to maintain stable flows which may be hopeful for turning into our profits,
although there are few viewers paying the gifts online. (P12)
4 2017 Report on Chinese we-media works’ living conditions [EB/OL]. iiMedia Research. (2017-02-15).
https://www.sohu.com/a/126329017_505807.
5 How to understand “600 million people’s average monthly income is only about 1,000 yuan,
today evening news” [EB/OL], (2020-06-11). http://epaper.jwb.com.cn/jwb/html/2020-06/11/
content_15355_2831829.htm.
Game Playing in the Platform Society
35
5.2 “Webcast +” Content Transformation and Third Space
Formation
Capital almost penetrates into every aspect of the media/society operation system,
even though it appears with different masks at diverse stages. In the we-media
content structure, the User-generated Content (UGC), Professional-generated
Content (PGC), and Occupation-generated Content (OGC) are the essential
expressions of flexible capital accumulation (Qiu, 2014; Wang, 2016). UGC is a
new concept in digital capitalism, which is regarded as addictive “sugar” in the 21st
century (Qiu, 2014). The informational data are assembled into an important part of
the Big Data analysis to provide advertisers with accurate data source and describe
direct research goals for many science-technology companies. During the digital
engagement and content transmission, an increasing number of customers fall
into “iSlave” on a variety of platforms; audience’s reading experience and public
participation are embodied into the “clipping rate”, becoming a bargaining chip
for capital accumulation.
Several network broadcast platforms had received different investments,
such as Kuaishou (350 million US dollars), Yi Webcast (3 billion US dollars) and
Huajiao (227 million US dollars)6. Nonetheless, a great deal of broadcasting
companies collapsed around 2016–2017 with the imposition of some official
policies authorized by the government for limiting negative shows on live
streaming platforms. In 2016, the State Administration of Press, Publication,
Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT) issued the Notice on Issues Related to
Strengthening the Management of Live Streaming Services for Online Audiovisual
Programs, requiring network anchors to hold certificates and get real-name
authentication7. On April 13, 2016, Baidu, Sina, Sohu, iQIYI and more than 20
other major enterprises engaged in network broadcast jointly released the
“self-discipline convention of Beijing network broadcast industry”, and
gradually established the “blacklist” system, setting an example in selfdiscipline8. YY, Huajiao, Inke, Douyu and other major webcast platforms
banned more than 30,000 accounts of offending anchors, closed nearly
90,000 direct broadcast rooms, and deleted nearly 50 million harmful
6 2016 Chinese
