Chinese cities seek to attract live-streaming talents for integration of live-streaming into e-commerce

In a bid to jump on the live-streaming e-commerce bandwagon, cities across China have begun setting development goals and competing for talents in the live-streaming industry through a raft of various favorable policies and measures, such as offering cash rewards and discounts for house purchases, Economic View reported on June 24.

A salesperson of Qingdao Essin Electrical Appliances Co., Ltd. at Bei’an street, Jimo district, Qingdao city, east China’s Shandong province, promotes refrigerators designed for African and other overseas markets via a live-streaming platform of Canton Fair, June 15. (Photo by Liang Xiaopeng/People’s Daily Online)

“We just received the invitation and will soon settle in a live-streaming e-commerce industrial base of Hangzhou,” the head of the live-streaming team of a small appliance company told Economic View on June 23.

The industrial base he referred to is a special industrial park located in Yuhang district, Hangzhou, capital of east China’s Zhejiang province. It was established to promote the role of live-streaming in e-commerce sales, and opened on April 28.

Yuhang district has made constant efforts to support the integration of live-streaming into e-commerce. On June 20, the district released a series of related policies, most notably the “identification of live-streaming talents”.

According to this policy, leading and dominant figures in the field can be officially identified as “national leading talents”.

The district provides a maximum 5 million yuan ($706,500) cash bonus for certain identified top-tier live-streamers, and research and development subsidies of up to 100 million yuan for live-streaming e-commerce companies valued at over $1 billion.

Huadu district in Guangzhou, capital of south China’s Guangdong province, will provide live-streaming sales talents cash rewards for purchasing houses in the district.

Top live-streamers who have more than half a million followers on well-known platforms will be awarded a maximum of 100,000 yuan, 300,000 yuan and 500,000 yuan for purchasing houses in the district if they help increase the annual sales volume for certain enterprises by over 10 million yuan, 20 million yuan and 50 million yuan respectively.

These talents are also entitled to other incentive measures provided by the district, such as preferential policies regarding apartments for talents, household registration and education for their children.

In addition to tempting preferential policies for attracting talents, various cities have also set development goals and formulated strategies for deepening integration of live-streaming into e-commerce.

Many cities have set similar goals, including building “a city of live-streaming e-commerce”, demonstrating their ambitions in the field.

Yuhang district set itself the goal of developing into the city’s number one district in the live-streaming economy on June 20.

Qingdao city in east China’s Shandong province hopes to become a leading live-streaming e-commerce city in northern China by the end of 2022 through efforts including training 1,000 outstanding live-streamers.

Guangzhou is determined to become a “well-known live-streaming e-commerce city nationwide” and cultivate 10,000 outstanding live-streaming sales talents.

Some cities have set specific targets and given concrete numbers for their efforts to boost the development of live-streaming e-commerce.

Chongqing municipality in southwest China has launched a “2111” project for live-streaming e-commerce, specifying targets including the building of over 20 live-streaming bases in producing areas, cultivating 1,000 well-known brands, training 10,000 live-streamers and striving to achieve a yearly turnover of over 10 billion yuan in online sales by the end of 2022.

Chongqing’s neighboring province Sichuan has set the goal of realizing an annual turnover of 10 billion yuan in online sales by 2022, and helping increase the output value of relevant industries by 100 billion yuan.

Jinan city in Shandong province aims to be home to the headquarters of over 20 nationally known live-streaming and short video enterprises, over 100 multi-channel networks (MCN), more than 300 popular online brands, over 5,000 live-streaming sales promotion accounts, and over 10,000 live-streamers for e-commerce.

The city also hopes to drive offline sales via online promotion efforts, and realize a turnover of 180 billion yuan in online and offline transactions in two to three years.

Similarly, Huadu district in Guangzhou has put forward the idea of building ten influential live-streaming bases, cultivating 100 model live-streaming-featured shops, and training and introducing over 1,000 online sales talents to realize a turnover of 100 billion yuan in online retail by 2022.