VTubers: China’s youth find comfort in virtual idols

In 1996, Chinese comedian Cai Ming walked onto the Spring Festival Gala stage as a “machine girlfriend” — a comic embodiment of technological fantasy that felt absurd at the time, but strangely prophetic in hindsight. Nearly 30 years later, she returned to the screen in a more contemporary form, as Nanako, a white-haired, anime-style virtual girl streaming on Bilibili under the VirtuaReal Star agency. 

Cai, now 64 and a well-known Chinese “National First-Class” actress, is hardly the archetypal VTuber (virtual YouTuber, or an online entertainer who uses a virtual avatar generated using computer graphics).

Her transformation into a “nakano hito”(the real human behind the virtual avatar) has fascinated audiences because it bridges two eras of performance: the live stage of China’s collective television memory and the individualised, algorithmic intimacy of livestream culture. 

In Simulacra and Simulation, Jean Baudrillard wrote: “The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth — it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.” 

People’s daily immersion in reels, livestreams and algorithm-curated feeds proves his point. Reality has become a collage of images, emotions and digital fragments. Within China’s entertainment ecosystem, this collapse between the real and the simulated has accelerated — from artificial intelligence (AI) anchors to virtual pop idols — and Nanako sits at the heart of this transformation. 

The term VTuber originated in Japan’s otaku culture, where digital avatars — animated through motion capture and facial tracking — perform live for online audiences. But unlike traditional fictional characters, VTubers depend entirely on the performer’s voice, timing and emotional expression. Their charm lies in a strange coexistence of illusion and sincerity: audiences know the character is artificial, yet willingly believe in her emotional presence. 

The avatar and its human operator form a hybrid presence that feels real yet remains perpetually untouchable, like a highly maintained coexistence of body and code. 

Within VTuber culture, there is an unspoken rule: keep the streamer’s actual identity a mystery. The audience and the VTuber enter a tacit agreement to sustain the illusion that “the character is real”. 

Within this shared context, conversations unfold as if the virtual persona truly exists, making the character fictional yet emotionally relatable. In doing so, the VTuber and the audience actively preserve the integrity of the virtual identity, including the avatar’s form — they may be a vampire, an angel or even a dog.

Whatever performance is put on the table is what shapes the avatar. This agreement enables the avatar to sustain a stable social existence. Thus, VTubing is not merely a technological novelty but reshapes the boundaries between performance and identity. What viewers invest in is not only the person behind the screen, but also the performed personality of the avatar. Being a VTuber is a form of disembodied affective labour that builds a persistent “parasocial relationship”, suspended between algorithm and emotion. 

When VTubing began in Japan, companies such as hololive and Nijisanji industrialised this model, training performers, building merchandise empires and managing careers as if they were pop idols. But in China, VTubing developed differently. Platforms like Bilibili and Douyin host a decentralised ecosystem that blends streaming, fan donations and algorithm-driven exposure. 

As an adaptation of Japan’s subculture, China’s version borrows the style and spirit but develops in a looser, more independent environment. Lacking strong corporate backing or public legitimacy, most Chinese VTubers operate independently — investing in high-end gear, commissioning avatar models and sustaining emotionally demanding broadcasts with little financial return. 

As a result, VTubing in China is less a glamorous idol industry than a fragile form of digital self-employment. Behind the cute virtual shell often lies a performer struggling to pay off equipment costs. For some young people facing unemployment, VTubing becomes a tentative survival strategy — a way to exist, to be seen, even if through another skin. 

This is what makes Cai’s entry so remarkable. Unlike many VTubers hustling for income, Nanako exists as a performance experiment — a veteran artist reimagining herself in digital adolescence. 

Cai has been a beloved face of Chinese comedy since the 1990s, famous for her sharp humour and empathetic portrayals of ordinary women navigating social change. In her 1996 sketch Machine Girlfriend (《机器人趣话》), she played a companion robot — a comedic take on love and technology that now feels eerily ahead of its time. 

Nanako’s design draws from the “healing” aesthetics of anime: soft colours, big eyes and a mission to bring joy. Yet Cai’s comic rhythm and warmth shine through the digital filter. The result is a charming contradiction — a young avatar carrying the wit and tenderness of an experienced performer. Viewers affectionately call her “Cyber Granny” (赛博奶奶). Rather than breaking immersion, this contrast creates a new form of intimacy — bridging generations through irony and sincerity. 

Nanako now has over 1.8 million followers, and her appeal speaks to something deeper than nostalgia. In today’s China, young people live under immense academic and economic pressures, navigating precarious jobs and chronic self-doubt. Family communication often struggles to keep pace with these realities. 

Parents, shaped by the reforms and market turbulence of the 1980s and 1990s, and grandparents, marked by famine and the Cultural Revolution, inherited values rooted in survival, obedience and social conformity. Their worldviews were forged in scarcity and collective struggle, vastly different from that of today’s youth. As a result, their guidance often feels distant or irrelevant in an era defined by instability, mobility and emotional precarity. 

Younger generations, meanwhile, are confronting relentless academic competition, uncertain employment, rising living costs and growing concerns around gender, identity and mental health. At the same time, they are caught in a culture that glorifies credentials and success as the only valid measures of worth. This widening historical and psychological gap makes traditional family communication increasingly inadequate, deepening intergenerational misunderstandings and emotional alienation. 

In this landscape, young people have turned to digital spaces for the support they cannot find at home. Relationships are redefined: intimacy is mediated through screens, yet the emotions exchanged are real. In these virtual encounters, a new kind of “family” is quietly taking shape, one bound not by blood but by recognition, warmth and shared understanding. 

Mainstream narratives in China frequently emphasise “how hard it is to be a parent”, yet seldom ask, “how hard is it to be someone’s child?” 

Home can feel less like a refuge and more like a space of misunderstanding. Many families, burdened by stress and pride, struggle to offer emotional literacy or empathy. 

During one stream, a viewer confessed to anxiety over a medical licensing exam. Nanako cheered them on, and the chat was filled with words of encouragement. Weeks later, the same viewer returned, announcing that they had passed the exam; the stream turned into a collective celebration. 

In another case, a fan caring for a terminally ill mother said that Nanako’s presence helped her endure long nights. When her mother passed, the chat quietly filled with “hugs” (抱抱). 

What sets Cai apart from typical elders is the communicative framework she enables. In real life, people are often limited in how open and receptive they can be. But within this virtual space, Cai remains constantly open to everyone. Here, people can accompany one another freely, without interference, pressure or hierarchical expectation. Emotions can be expressed and received openly, unbound by social roles or familial authority. 

By engaging as an equal rather than as an authority figure, a genuinely interactive arena is formed, grounded in empathy rather than hierarchy. This highlights the critical role of platform and positioning: sometimes, only when traditional power structures are suspended can true understanding and connection emerge. 

In this context, the challenge remains: how can those rigid, old-fashioned thinkers learn to navigate new digital spaces and engage meaningfully with people living in the present before the evolving language of empathy and connection leaves them behind?

The rise of virtual idols reveals how emotional reality is being redefined. As more human connections occur through screens, the line between fiction and feeling grows porous. Virtual personas create an “idealised companionship”. Both audience and performer know that it is a construct, yet the care exchanged feels real. 

This dual awareness, of artifice and sincerity, is what sustains meaning. As Baudrillard said, we live in a world where “the hyperreal has replaced the real”. Nanako, as an example of virtual companionship, embodies how people rebuild emotional truth through simulation. 

Virtual idols offer a kind of tenderness refined by algorithms. Audiences know that it is an illusion, yet they still trust it, rely on it. That trust itself has become the emotional truth of our time. 

In Nanako’s world, humanity learns once again to empathise through data, to love through the language of the virtual, a reconstruction of emotional order in reality. 

Yes, virtual intimacy carries risks. Avatars are designed, replaceable and profit-driven. But behind the artificial skin, the flow of empathy, trust and companionship between human beings remain authentic and irreplaceable. 

As real relationships grow increasingly fragile, the virtual has become a new vessel for feeling. Here, the “skin” of the avatar filters out social pressures and judgment; human connection may paradoxically become purer, more intentional and more sincere. 

So, when people ask me if AI will replace us? I usually answer: it’s not about replacement, it’s about transformation. 

Technology can simulate tasks, replicate patterns or even mimic emotions, but what cannot be copied is the human capacity to connect, to feel nuance, to build trust and empathy over time. AI can create a persona, but it cannot love with fear or hurt with depth. It can participate but not generate the shared histories and cultural context that give relationships meaning. 

The avatar may be fictional, but the warmth exchanged through humans will always be undeniably real.

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