The past six months has brought a stream of bad news for China’s economy. Youth unemployment has hit a record high. As of July, more than one in five 16-to-24-year-olds were jobless. The following month, officials said they would temporarily stop publishing unemployment data.
The property sector, which until recently accounted for a third of China’s entire wealth, has long been teetering on the brink of a full-blown crisis. Economists have downgraded their forecasts for China’s economic growth, many to below the government’s target of about 5%.
Li – who first rose to fame in 2017 when he started hosting online sales sessions on shopping platform Taobao – is one of China’s most successful salesmen. He hawks a a range of products from food to cosmetics and homeware, and reportedly sells millions of dollars’ worth of items every night. He earned the moniker Lipstick King by once selling 150,000 lipsticks within five minutes. Over the years, Li has garnered some 150 million followers across multiple platforms – that number has shrunk since his controversial comments.
Given the bleak prospects millions of young Chinese face, Li’s comments are proof that his celebrity status has desensitised him to their struggles, critics said. But the anger has also provided a window to the disillusionment rampant among the country’s youth – one tweet read: “In social media comments responding to the Li Jiaqi incident, I saw a China that’s collapsing.”Burnt out or jobless – meet China’s ‘full-time children’
The memes that lay bare China’s youth disillusionment
The controversy began on Sunday when Li was livestreaming a sales pitch for an eyebrow pencil from Chinese cosmetic brand Florasis.In response to a viewer who commented that the eyebrow pencil was too expensive, Li said: “How is that expensive? This has been the price for so many years. Stop spouting nonsense,” he said, adding that domestic companies have been struggling.
He went on to tell the viewer off, “Sometimes you have to look inward, reflect on why you haven’t receive a pay raise after so many years. Have you been working hard enough?”
