[Big read] China’s rural officials are performing for attention online, with Xi’s blessing

(Edited and refined by Josephine Hong, with the assistance of AI translation.)

When Liu Fei (pseudonym), a post-2000s graduate from a prestigious university, passed the civil service exam, he never imagined he would quickly become a minor internet celebrity — a “village official influencer”.

Last year, Liu was dispatched to a remote village in China. Facing the harsh reality of poor transport links and the difficulty of selling local produce, he turned to short videos to share daily village life, even dancing to viral hits in the middle of farm fields. He quickly amassed tens of thousands of followers, paving the way for e-commerce livestreaming, which has allowed villagers to sell their goods across China without leaving their homes. In less than six months, Liu’s sales reached close to 100,000 RMB (US$14,600).

After completing two consecutive hours-long livestream sessions over the weekend, Liu told Lianhe Zaobao, “I don’t really want to be an influencer. But I’ll do it for the sake of the village.”

Grassroots “influencer officials” like Liu have been emerging across Chinese short-video platforms. From county heads to various village officials, they are using fancy stunts to capture traffic and endorse local produce and tourism. Singing and dancing are their standard opening acts, and calling netizens “bao“ (宝, baby or darling) has become a catchphrase. Some bold young officials have even stripped down to flex their muscles, leading to online quips that they “toiled to pass the civil service exam, only to push the limits for the people”.

Nie Huihua, a professor at the School of Economics at Renmin University of China and author of The Operating Logic of Grassroots China, published last year, viewed this “influencer officials” phenomenon as a transformation of local government and officialdom.

When interviewed, he noted, “When have you ever seen government officials trying to please ordinary people? It’s rare. Whether it’s for improving the government’s image or the business environment, it’s a positive thing. We should encourage it.”

To appeal to audiences on the other side of the screen, grassroots officials across China have spent the past year engaging in fierce competition for attention. They follow online trends — performing quirky dances in villages, doing rustic rap, or joining the viral Waya Waya Wa (挖呀挖呀挖, Let’s dig, dig, dig) nursery rhyme trend in the fields. At one point, netizens joked, “Open a short-video app and nine out of ten grassroots officials are dancing in rice paddies. The last one is singing “Waya Wa”.

Some have gone further, filming their daily work — visiting villagers for shared meals, delivering food to elderly residents living on their own, or even reporting their work to netizens as if they were “superiors”, all of which has drawn significant attention.

As a member of this group, Liu Fei has danced, shared meals, and given a report on his work. Furthermore, his status as a “chosen candidate” (选调生) has boosted his traffic significantly. In China’s civil service, such recruits are selected from top universities to be future leaders and are required to work at the grassroots level for two years.

China implements a system of self-governance in rural areas. Many village party secretaries, village heads and graduate village officials who have gained fame, like Liu Fei, are not actually formal civil servants. Despite their various backgrounds, these influencer officials almost all follow the same path once they go viral: becoming e-commerce livestream hosts.

This wave of influencer officials engaged in e-commerce livestreaming began in 2020 among county leaders. Douyin reported that in that year alone, more than 100 mayors and county heads entered the livestreaming space, selling 123 million RMB worth of agricultural products.

Encouragement from the top leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic is seen as a key driver.

Chu Chaoxin, we-media personality and former senior political journalist who has interacted with many influencer officials, recalled that after the first wave of the pandemic in early 2020, agricultural sales and tourism were virtually paralysed, leading to local economic distress. He said, “At that time, high-level leadership urged local officials to use new media to alleviate people’s hardships, boost sales and restore the local economy. This was key.”

In March 2020, Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping instructed that the internet be used to broaden sales channels and resolve unsold agricultural products. During an inspection trip to Shaanxi in April, he noted, “E-commerce is very important in the promotion of agricultural and related products.”

Subsequently, Chinese state media reported that the local wood ear mushrooms went viral overnight because of Xi’s promotion, describing him as the “strongest salesperson” and a “super influencer”.

Researchers from the University of Nottingham and Zhejiang University interviewed 13 officials involved in livestreaming. Many stated that doing so was “politically correct”, with some explicitly citing the endorsement of Xi.

Wilson Wang, a lecturer at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Nottingham Ningbo China, said, “For Chinese officials to livestream is counterintuitive, so they needed a symbolic green light. No one is more persuasive or authoritative than President Xi.”

Among them, Chen Canping, then the deputy mayor of Anhua county, Hunan, became known as the “First County Head Influencer”, livestreaming over 300 sessions in six months and selling over 15 million RMB worth of goods through the Douyin account “County head Chen talks about Anhua” (陈县长说安化). He told state-run media outlet China Economic Weekly, “I was unsure at first, but after seeing the general secretary’s instruction, I felt it was worth a try.

Simultaneously, accounts such as “County head He talks about Zhaosu”, “County head Xiang talks about Guzhang” and “County head Tang loves Taihu” created by the respective deputies began appearing across Douyin.

Wang observed that despite the high-level “green light”, most local officials are not keen to go online. Instead, “those in more marginal roles in the formal bureaucracy are more motivated.” Among the hundred over livestreaming officials he studied, nearly half are deputy county heads.

We-media personality Chu added, “This group of influencers are generally not the main heads of local government, but rather department heads, deputy bureau heads or deputy county heads.”

“County head He talks about Zhaosu” became a standout. In November 2020, a video of an official in a red cape on horseback galloping across a snowy terrain went viral, reaching 600 million views. This was He Jiaolong, then deputy agricultural head of Zhaosu county, Ili prefecture, Xinjiang. Her followers jumped to over 1 million overnight. 

In 2021, she was promoted to deputy director of the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture Culture, Radio, Television and Tourism Bureau, and by 2023, she had moved to the Xinjiang Agricultural Product Brand Development and Marketing Service Centre, and her followers exceeded 6 million, making her a top influencer official.

However, an accident in January this year brought this to an abrupt end. The 47-year-old He died after a horse-riding accident during a promotional shoot. Authorities later honoured her as an “Outstanding Communist Party Member”, noting that her livestreams had directly generated over 600 million RMB in sales over five years across 500 charity livestreams, indirectly pulling in 52.7 billion RMB for Xinjiang’s agricultural products.

While the data suggest that this “influencer official” phenomenon is a success, He Jiaolong once revealed in an interview with Honesty Outlook (廉政瞭望), a Sichuan provincial magazine that focuses on anti-corruption, that she had considered quitting three times while serving as deputy county head of Zhaosu due to hurtful criticisms from both inside and outside the government system. Netizens accused her of “not doing her job” or “not serving the people”, while conservative colleagues felt that an official should not be “seeking attention”, remarking, “How can such a mature leader like you be all over TikTok?”

However, every time He expressed her desire to give up, she was dissuaded by the leaders who believed that officials must “go online”. Coupled with the “love of her fans”, she persevered.

He Jiaolong also told Beijing News that she was not used to other livestreamers calling their fans “baobao“ and “family” at first, and felt it was a bit cheesy. “But I gradually came to genuinely understand the meaning of these terms,” she said.

We-media personality Chu, who publicly supported He when she faced these doubts, believes that these officials took huge risks to do something unprecedented. Chu said, “There is infighting, suspicion and jealousy within the officialdom. The internal criticisms and pressure were enormous at the time.”

He also noticed a divergence around 2022: some officials carried on, while many faded from view, largely depending on whether their superiors supported them. Provincial and county leaders have become increasingly rare on the short-video platforms, replaced by village officials. “This suggests that the environment is still not tolerant enough,” he said.

Even village officials face doubts. Liu Fei said that he has experienced the same criticisms of “neglecting duties” or “personal promotion” that He received. Liu noted, “Running this account or not makes no difference to my life — like every other grassroots official, no one would blame you. But if you want to get things done, personal preference is less important than the collective interest.”

Renmin University’s Nie pointed out in a public discussion on Weixin Channels that while fame is typically an asset in the attention economy, it can be a liability in China’s political culture, which “does not traditionally encourage standing out”. Still, he argued “star officials” are often boldly innovative, “we cannot simply see that officials showing off is a bad thing. Our traditional culture should also reflect on this.”

Lin Yangduo, a post-95 Communist Youth League branch secretary from Yangyu village in Shaoxing city, Zhejiang, went viral last year for squeezing a persimmon with his biceps while wearing a tight black tank top. Media outlets noted that as his clothes became “fewer and tighter”, the village’s products “sold better”.

This “borderline” or “thirst-trap” approach has trended among village influencers. In February, Phoenix Weekly estimated that at least 70 village officials accounts or agricultural assistance accounts have posted such content. One young official from Yunnan admitted that it helped sell out 80 tons of orah mandarins, which otherwise wouldn’t gain any online attention, but his account was reported three times in a month for “publishing harmful information”.

Liu Fei admitted many have told him to “post something edgy”, but he viewed it as “vulgar” and refuses to pander to the market and “become a slave to the market”.

In February, Xinhua News Agency criticised the “appalling” trend of scantily clad agricultural livestreamers in provocative poses, and quoted experts in calling for regulators to crackdown on these unsavoury methods in agricultural promotion.

We-media personality Chu believes that most rural areas in China lack resources, and village officials try every means to attract traffic to help farmers increase their income. As long as they do not break the law, there is no need to make a fuss and criticise them. “We shouldn’t overpoliticise the situation,” he said.

“Tell me which unit of the State Taxation Administration your son works for? He won’t have to drink alcohol anymore.”

In 2013, that was how Cai Qi — then a member of the Standing Committee of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee and head of the province’s Organisation Department, now a member of the Politburo Standing Committee and secretary of the Secretariat of the CCP Central Committee — responded on Weibo to a mother’s concern about her son being forced to drink at work.

After Cai opened his official Weibo account in 2010, he not only made his personal Google email address public, but also posted thousands of articles from his iPhone, chatting with netizens about everything from anti-corruption to praising actor Daniel Wu’s good looks. Cai became a celebrity official with millions of followers.

Back then, when Weibo gained traction, tens of thousands of party and government officials maintained active profiles, including then top Xinjiang official Zhang Chunxian, who became the highest-ranking official with a Weibo account.

However, this influencer-official trend has gradually faded. Cai disappeared from Weibo after he was sent to Beijing in 2014 to serve as deputy director of the General Office of the CCP National Security Commission and promoted to ministerial level the following year. Zhang’s name was also no longer found among Weibo users.

Compared with the earlier era of influencer officials, today’s influencer officials are generally lower-ranking officials that do not hold local leadership positions. They focus more on livestreaming sales of agricultural products and promoting tourism resources, and almost never express their views on social issues. 

We-media personality Chu believes that officials who intervene in social governance now face massive risks, “such a group will most likely never appear again.” 

In February this year, an unverified Douyin account of a county party secretary in Hunan province went viral for responding to the daily concerns of the public, becoming a major news story on the Chinese internet.

Chu lamented that when something that was commonplace more than a decade ago suddenly reappeared, everyone was pleasantly surprised and applauded. “This shows that society is going backwards, which is not a good sign,” he said.

Renmin University’s Nie highlighted that each era has its own models of governance and different levels of technological progress, “nonetheless, the government must adapt to societal shifts, maintain interaction with the public, and stay attuned to public sentiment. This is a requirement of the government.”

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “中国特稿：攒声量博流量赚销量 网红干部得失难估量”.

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