By now, you already know that Li Jiaqi, the top live streamer on Taobao’s ecommerce live platform, had his live session abruptly pulled off air last Friday because of this:

Yes, his assistant made a tank shaped cake and Li was apparently not aware of the sensitivity behind this, especially on 3rd of June.

June 4th is an (extremely) politically sensitive date in China. For those who are not aware of the incident in 1989, you can read this Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Liberation_Army_at_Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989

However, a lot of young people were probably not aware of that history (Li, who was born in 1992, was probably one of them).

It feels extremely likely that Li was set up by someone from his team – he would have enough enemies who would like to see his downfall.

That night, he said on his microblog (Weibo) that a ‘technical fault’ had stopped the live streaming.

He has not said anything ever since.

Li Jiaqi’s incident, however, is probably far less serious than the bizarre one in 2017, which caused the downfall of a US$150 million bike sharing company:

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Thanks for reading The Low Down (TLD), the blog by the team at Momentum Works. Got a different perspective or have a burning opinion to share? Let us know at [email protected].