E-commerce has taken wealth creation to the next new level. Gone was the old expectation from parents that their children would want to become a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer. Likewise, teachers would probably get a shock today when students said they would like to become a YouTuber or an Influencer, jobs that never existed about 20 years ago.
But thanks to the internet and social media, a YouTuber or an Influencer could earn so much money that it would put professions of law and medicine to shame. And if you’re blessed with marketing, public speaking or sales skills, it’s possible to become a billionaire just by promoting products online. That’s what happens to China’s super salesgirl – Viya, whose real name is Huang Wei.
With over 110 million followers on social media (over 80 million followers on Taobao alone), Viya can sell practically anything on the internet. Known as China’s “queen of live streaming” – a format that combines infomercial and group chat – she sold products worth a whopping 8.5 billion Yuan (US$1.33 billion) just in one evening during the recent online annual “Singles Day” shopping spree on 11.11.
On April 1, 2020, everyone thought it was an April Fool joke with posters screaming “world’s first live broadcast of a rocket sale”. But not only more than 2-million online viewers tuned in to watch the sale, Viya actually succeeded in selling the rocket launch service, which national newspaper Global Times confirmed to be genuine, for 40 million Yuan (US$5.6 million).
Even though two Boeing 747 jets were bought on Taobao in November 2017, it was the first time that a commercial rocket launch was sold on the e-commerce platform. Prior to selling the rocket launch service, Viya, who specializes in beauty products, snacks, and household goods, managed to sell out 15,000 bottles of Kim Kardashian’s KKW-brand perfume in just a few minutes during the 2019’s Singles Day.
Livestreamer Viya was so influential that her audience places orders worth millions of dollars – every night – for cosmetics, appliances, clothing and even houses and cars. She said she would sell anything and everything her fans desire, including doorbells, carpets, toothbrushes, furniture, mattresses and whatnot, thanks to Alibaba’s technology that allows people to watch a live stream.
The arrival of Covid-19, which forced many people under stay-at-home orders, doubled her viewership – and income. As her influence and revenue skyrocket, it also attracted the attention of the government. On Monday (Dec 20), tax authorities finally made the move and declared that the e-commerce influencer had “evaded 643 million Yuan (US$100 million) in taxes” between 2019 and 2020.
The State Taxation Administration has slapped Huang Wei with 1.34 billion Yuan (US$210 million) in back taxes, late fees and fines – the biggest of its kind in Beijing’s sweeping crackdown on celebrities. The taxman said the livestream shopping influencer had “concealed personal income by falsely declaring the commission income she earned from livestreaming platforms”.
The tax officials in Hangzhou said – “If she can pay the tax, late fee and fine within the prescribed time limit, she will not be investigated for criminal accountability. If she fails, the tax authority will transfer it to the police department for processing according to law”. Expressing her guilt, the 36-year-old Huang admitted – “I am very remorseful and apologize to the public.”
But the punishment was just the beginning. Viya’s lifeblood, social media accounts of Taobao Live, Weibo and Douyin (Chinese version of TikTok), were effectively removed or deactivated on the same Monday. The government has also cancelled a title that promotes good behaviour on the internet, which was awarded to her in July.
The action on the celebrity is part of Beijing crackdown on tax evasion, which the government perceived as immoral behaviour in the entertainment industry that have been ongoing for too long. In September, the State Taxation Administration issued a notice of measures to strengthen tax administration in the entertainment sector, including livestreamers.
To scrutiny the powerful industry, the Ministry of Commerce has revealed an “industry standard” for live-streamers who market products on online shopping platforms. Among the rules included details about how hosts on such shows should dress or speak in front of the camera. The effect of the fine on influencer Viya was so obvious that the stock price of Alibaba plunged 5.8%.
According to consulting firm KPMG, the explosive growth of live streaming e-commerce market could be valued at 1 trillion Yuan (US$156 billion) in 2020. A job of a live-streamer like Huang Wei, who specialized in selling products on the internet, has been categorized under a new occupation called “Online Marketers”, a profession that saw a growth rate of 9% every month.
The crackdown was part of President Xi Jinping’s “common prosperity” drive – a campaign which analysts said designed to reduce economic inequality. This is not the first time Viya had committed an offence though. In June, she was fine 530,000 Yuan (US$83,221) for breaching advertising laws, after some of her fans complained that she was selling counterfeit products.
In 2018, Chinese mega star Fan Bingbing was fined a jaw-dropping US$129 million for tax evasion and other offences. The scandal saw her disappeared for a couple of months, which later emerged that she had been detained and interrogated. She again went missing from the industry for two years, before making her appearance in 2020. Fan announced her breakup with fiancé, actor Li Chen, in 2019.
Viya’s fine, which is bigger than the one slapped on actress Fan Bingbing, speaks volumes about the influence and revenue commanded by the live streamer. Huang Wei had total sales of 38.6 billion Yuan (US$6 billion) in 2020 alone, the most among her peers. That’s about a third of U.S. Department Store Macy global net sales of US$17.3 billion in the same year.
But what really concerned Beijing was her powerful force as an influencer. With a few clicks to disable or remove her social media accounts, however, the powerful influencer has been brought to her knees, crippling her online business empire. The man who was responsible for Beijing’s crackdown could be traced to none other than Alibaba founder Jack Ma, former richest man in China.
Ever since Jack Ma criticised Chinese financial regulation in a speech in October 2020, a regulatory storm has pummelled the country’s entire online financial and consumer sector, which has now spread to e-commerce live streaming. The dramatic suspension of Ant Group, which could add another US$37 billion to Jack Ma’s empire, was due to the billionaire’s “big mouth”.
Making critical comments about China’s financial regulator, he said – “Today’s financial system is the legacy of the Industrial Age. We must set up a new one for the next generation and young people. We must reform the current system”. Of course, the China’s Communist Party was not impressed with Jack Ma’s remarks, which were seen as not only arrogant, but an attempt to undermine Beijing.
The listing of Ant Group (valued at US$316 billion), which was scrapped, would make Jack Ma a very powerful man if it was allowed to proceed. Crucially, if Beijing did not show him who’s the real boss after he lectured Beijing how to run the country’s financial system, it could set a bad example for other super wealthy or celebrities whose fame and influence could move hundreds of millions of people in China.
Essentially, the fine on Huang Wei was another message that no one can cross the red or legal line, regardless of industry or how rich or influential they are. Instead of spending huge resources in supervising the live streaming e-commerce, Beijing deliberately punished the super high-income earners to create a climate of fear so that everyone plays by the rules. And the first rule is – don’t try to evade taxes.
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December 22nd, 2021 by financetwitter
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Aspirations of most Malaysian parents for their baby monkeys are hardly a topic for the tauhu inside their midget skulls, considering there’s always the apartheid right to do nothing than being fcuking bums, laze under the palm trees, and hang around for the privileges and freebies for being the Mat Armpit scums of the nightsoil. And if wan wants to struggle and put up with the toils of sleeping through studies, there’s also the privilege and crutches for sailing through exams as there’s the safety net of passing marks being twiddled so that da “supreme” lot do not fail to make their fcuking bogus “supremacy” look more like the awful truth of some bankrupt ideology.
Of course, Bolehland cannot beat or even challenge Almighty Ketuanan Chinese in anything even if for any weird reason we mustn’t question the rights of our monkeys to be “masters” of the land, the Alamighty blessed them with high intelligence and supreme talent so the monkeys like to think, but it seems She more into cursing Bolehlanders who elected themselves to speak and act for Her. How else can you explain why whatever our monkeys do (and mostly don’t and can’t do), it is always always an unbelievable failure? And the failure is faithfully repeated ever after.
Only days ago, the custodian and protector of the two holy cities in Saudi Arabia staged a giant Western-style rave party, something our mullahs and mullah-wannabes and assorted pious potatoes have no guts nor creative imagination to do. The huge do, equipped with Angmoh kafir DJs, deafening music, dramatic disco lights was an amazing success with men and women, boys and girls doing wild dancing together, the females tossed away their hijabs – and probably their bras and knickers too. I say Power to them ugh ugh..! As they weren’t struck by lightning and flooded by oil or water, I dare say the great earth-shaking event must have the blessings of the Big Woman up the Sky.
Our ketuanan needs better tauhu in the skull.
I’m for limb-chopping taxation to fund the country. I’m also for very stiff punishment for tax-dodgers. Before you monkeys cheer me on, I should also say all able-bodied should work. That’s because all should contribute to fill up the nation’s coffer, the more monkeys to pay heavy taxes, the better. There should never be any case of any blood-sucking parasites leeching off others, whether they be of the self-proclaimed “chosen wans” or any other wans.
We need those creative to generate money – and lots of that. We need to keep lots of money circulating and creating even more money. Any wan should understand that, especially our politicians: lots of money also means they can steal more from our national coffer, and bribes can be fatter and even more desirable. Our other parasites like for example mullahs and religious munafiqs should understand that with more money around, more of them can have more high-end foreign cars.
In order that those able to make money be able to generate lots and lots of that, all non-Protestant constraints (read Weber) should be cast aside, there should be no kacau kacau by any Merc- or Audi-driving religious munafiq on what they approve or not for business. For a start, alcohol, cigarettes, make-ups, and so on are not ok for some. But then, it can be strongly argued alcohol is fine, the holy books talk of wines in Paradise; if the shishas and hookah are ok in, for example, the Middle East, then there shouldn’t be any issue with cigarettes: both harm the body, if one is not ok, neither is the other, wtf! Still, cigarettes are another big winner when it comes to tax. Like alcohol, there’s a lot of huge bribery in the business. Our politicians, police, and customs monkeys all like the alcohol and cig businesses – especially when it is contraband goodies.
With make-ups/cosmetics, the general wisdom is we should be accepting and grateful for the way the Alamighty designed us. It is only ok for some if make-ups are only used to make the husband happy. And you have to compete with his other wives and mistresses too, maybe even the maid. It has to be said some of our monkeys do really need make-ups, they can’t even accept their own look. Often the husbands need make-up too – or even face-lifts – plus body surgery, our men are equally ugly. But for now, most societies are only critical about the women, here I’m specifically saying make-ups are not really permitted for some religion.
Malaysia’s streets and alleys are full of joints selling all varieties of quack products and remedies for your mugs and bodies, all sorts of fears, panics, insecurities are catered for for our both our kiasu out to grab everything for non-existent ailments and kiasi needs. Garbage for longevity and immortality are readily available if you can pay those very high premiums. All the rubbish, many banned in other countries are up for grab by our fcuking retard monkeys who also act as channels to push the products through barely-disguised pyramid extortion schemes. It is terribly easy to shaft money out of our numbskull monkeys – even when none of, for example, the “beauty” products have ever made beautiful princesses or knightmares in shining armour out of our fcuking ugly toads!
Make-up is a blooming big thing in Bolehland. You see just too many and more women dissatisfied with their look (which the Alamighty gifted them). Fortunes are spent on cosmetics. We even have our own cosmetic industry, plenty of face repair or even face replacement outfits. We too, have our own “influencer”, and if s/he wasn’t been harassed by the religious munafiqs and escaped from here, we had a big name cosmetic manufacturer and influencer still. I have to say our influencer had a bigger fan club than any of our retard politicians or religious munafiqs, and s/he actually look more attractive than our politicians or religious munafiqs who always look like the back of a garbage truck, think and talk like garbage trucks too.
I have nothing against the said successful runaway, or how s/he dresses to go to any “holy” place, you no longer need a male relative to accompany you if you are female in Saudi Arabia. Whatever the Saudis say goes, we don’t have any authority here. Besides, I’ve read in some scripture (read them yourself), a most holy wan put on the clothes of his wife, so wtf if someone else male or female put on the clothes of another gender?
Saudi Arabia is the first and last word when it comes to its religion. And Saudi Arabia has ditched the Hadiths – which in due course, would make the work of our mullahs redundant. Soon it will be meaningless to give any money, let alone huge sums to our religious munafiqs and their outfits to help confuse and confound you in your faith, without the Hadiths, you don’t need anyone to interpret, explain, or talk rot about any “holy” confusion to you, Amin.
Our excruciatingly unintelligent monkeys collect walking rubbish like that unproductive terrorist financier suspect Zakir, we can certainly harbour useful talents from anywhere better than from fcuking Hindia. Strange the ugly Fakir now says he’s not really an expert in comparative religion, look on the internet and you can easily find the old goat boasting and bullshiiting about his limitless expertise in everything, including comparative religion, what a fcuking liar! If you half-bother checking his output in funny Hinglish, you’d find him talking huge bullock bollocks about his supposed religion. Look a bit further on the internet and you would find him forever and ever running away from others wanting to have serious discussion about Islam. There’s a Bangladeshi group that’s been trying to get the dirty con artist to stay still and have a proper discussion on some doctrinal issues, for years. Still, you can rely on our fcuking morons to flock to the charlatan, and dutifully swallow any old shiite from the bullockshitter!
We need someone like Huang Wei to push anything, but especially alcohol in Malaysia. I am suddenly reminded of another lady, promoted Carlsberg in a supermarket, had a Holy Joe lectured and chastised her for doing that. The video showed the young woman with gigantic balls politely verbally fcuked the holy wan, talked down to him, and called him out for being racist for insisting she should speak in, was it Arabic? And was it doubly humiliating when the monkey had to go national to apologise for being called a racist..?
Alcohol is a big winner when it comes to tax. Take away alcohol and you take away a gigantic pile of moolah. There’s nothing wrong taxing the kafirs for their alcohol. Let them drink to their livers’ content, what’s wrong with that? Just because you think you can dictate to (some of) your women doesn’t mean you’ve got the fcuking kaypoh right to dictate to all. The fcuking ISIS isn’t quite here yet, stop twitching with the control freakery and the meat cleaver! ISIS and similar terrorist outfits are so fcuking useless it can’t operate anywhere in the West. In fact, these frauds are used by the West to help perpetuate control over countries the West wants to control.
All the same, the moral of the story is it is an amazing thing, if you want to, and you’ve got intelligence and creativity, you could be like the Chinese woman, dodging tax is another story. You need to have the wit and ability, get up from under the coconut trees, to make the money first before you need worry about dodging tax. For Bolehland, there’s a situation of too few able to make good money, with those able to make money paying too little tax either by doing khalwat with politicians or bribing those in tax offices. For yet others who are able to make money, their successful businesses are often taken over by those who would proceed to run the business down due to the mentality of sheer greed and skill at killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. Even our money-maker chosen wan cosmetic talent is hounded out of our country. Our ketuanan is just that pig fcuking stupid.
My holy sermons – and the Truth, have always been there’s absolutely no way Ketuanan Bolehland can ever come anywhere near the amazingly successful Almighty Ketuanan Cina. There’s little room in Bolehland for those with talent like this Chinese tax-dodging wonder to last for long, the talent-free among our ketuanan crooks would want to cut in the business but invest nothing, be control freaks as weaklings are, many would want to drop their pants or sarongs at the sight of a woman (or thereabouts) because of their “incredible sexual drive” (I bet they drive like those old fcuking Protons too!).
Still, if you think you are fcuking ugly (no crime that) and think you need make-up, you may still get away with wearing a burqa and hide away, nothing wrong with that, Ketuanan Cina makes the favourite fabrics used for those walking tents. After the West made their mass murder of the innocent in Afghanistan, Ketuanan Cina is coming in to make their commercial killing, the Afghans are already liking it, Ketuanan Cina makes better friends than the Afghans’ ineffectual “Muslim” bros! The latter are famous for running around like fcuking headless chickens before getting nothing done. Sounds deliciously familiar? If you don’t understand this, you haven’t been to Bolehland!
With the great and good news the desert folks in the Middle East are transforming their religion, our copycat monkey-see-monkey-do errr monkeys would have to follow whatever the camel-piss drinkers do, and pirate copy them. Among our women are plenty of those who are dying for a good wild rave party! Ask any of them, they will readily recite the names of idols from K-Pop than the names of our mullahs, chapters and verses. All over the Middle East are multitudes of secret (or even open) boozers. Ditto central Asia. There’s a delightful pipeline from boozy Kazakhstan to boozy Kyrgyzstan, it used to be a secret lifeline. One of the great achievements of Xinjiang is its century old wine-distilling skill, drinking wine among the believers there is plenty ok. I hope our mullahs and mullah-wannabes will continue to fight (or at least make noises) for the Xinjiang distiller Uyghur bros.
Last word here, Bolehland should attract talents like this Chinese Wonder Woman, make Malaysia Great (Again?), show the Commie kaffirs what we can do, by unleashing her among our women (our “men” are really useless) and we’ll get real change (if the “men” don’t interfere). There’s the only hope for Malaysia to get anywhere when the women take over, I read yesterday a Malay woman confronted Noh-can-do and gave him a mighty earful. Her hefty bout of patronising scolding is a polite verbal knee between the legs, totally demolishing the manhood – or emotional adolescence of Noh-can’t-do, Bless this woman!
Meanwhile, enjoy Hanggai over the kaffirs’ festive season (for some). Btw, that’s not a mic he’s holding!:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3i0KcW7sYGM
More Hanggai:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4IMwiwxK__A
Still more drinking:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O6WoiHHywZQ