Why Li Ziqi — China’s Most Famous Youtuber — Disappeared
Li Ziqi was China’s most popular YouTuber, captivating millions of people with her beautiful countryside vlogs and her unique way of showcasing traditional Chinese culture. But just as quickly as she rose to fame, she suddenly stopped uploading videos and vanished from the internet without a trace. What has happened? In this article, we will delve into her mysterious disappearance and explore the complex relationship between Li Ziqi and the MCN organization that helped make her a star.
Who is Li Ziqi?
Li Ziqi is a Chinese Youtuber who gained fame for her videos showcasing traditional Chinese culture, cooking, and lifestyle. Born in Sichuan, China, Li grew up in a small village and had a difficult childhood. She was raised by her grandmother and had to drop out of school to help her family financially. Despite this, she never lost her passion for learning and eventually taught herself a variety of skills, including cooking, farming, and crafting.
Li’s love for the traditional Chinese way of life is reflected in her videos, which often feature her making delicious meals using ingredients grown on her own farm, or showcasing her skills in traditional Chinese crafts like paper-cutting and knot-tying. Her videos have been praised for their simplicity, beauty, and ability to transport viewers to a peaceful, idyllic world.
Li’s videos are adored by her followers for promoting Chinese culture and tradition as well as preserving the traditional way of life. Her channel has grown rapidly in popularity. She has over 17 million Youtube subscribers worldwide, and her videos have been viewed nearly 3 billion times. In January 2021, Li Ziqi was crowned by Guinness World Records for having the “most subscribers for a Chinese language channel on Youtube”, with 14.1 million followers at the time.
“Most subscribers for a Chinese language channel on Youtube.” — Guinness World Records
Li Ziqi remains China’s top Youtuber, even without uploading another video since the middle of 2021. No matter if you look at Youtubers from China or Youtubers that make China-related content, Li Ziqi is the undisputed number 1.
Influencer and MCN
In July 2021, Li Ziqi uploaded her last video on her Youtube channel. The video is about 7 things that matter in Chinese people’s daily lives which include: firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, and tea. She hasn’t posted since. This has come as a surprise to many of her fans, as she had built a reputation for consistently creating high-quality content and had a strong following on her channel. It turns out, this is related to the MCN that has been behind her success.
First, let’s take a closer look at what an MCN is. An MCN, or Multi-Channel Network, is a company or organization that works with social media influencers and creators to help them grow their online presence and monetize their content. MCNs offer a range of services, including audience development, content production, ad sales, technical support, and more.
In general, the relationship between an influencer and an MCN is one of mutual benefit. The influencer partners with an MCN in order to gain access to resources and support that will help them grow and monetize. In return, the influencer gives the MCN a percentage of the revenue. This percentage can vary depending on the MCN and the specific terms of the agreement. Sometimes, disputes over the terms can become a source of tension, which happens to be the case of Li Ziqi that led to her stepping back from Youtube.
MCNs in China
In recent years, the MCN industry in China has grown rapidly. With the rise of social media platforms like Douyin (TikTok’s China version), Kuaishou, Little Red Book, along with the increasing popularity of short-form video content, the demand for MCNs in China has exploded. In 2015, the total number of MCNs in China was a mere 160. In 2017, that number grew to an astounding 1700. But this was just the beginning. In 2019, the number of MCNs in China exploded to over 20,000, showing a staggering increase of more than 12,000% in just four years.
Li Ziqi was able to ride the wave of the China’s booming MCN industry and become the top content creator in the country. Li started out as a small content creator. She posted her first video in 2016 to promote her store on Taobao, an Ebay-like online shopping platform owned by Alibaba. The video was about how to make cherry wine, which presents a strong sense of antiquity and coincides with the beauty of idyllic life in the minds of many people. This video caught the attention of Liu Tongming, the founder of a small MCN called Weinian. He reached out to Li to show his appreciation, but she did not respond initially. However, Liu didn’t give up and followed up, eventually going to Sichuan to meet her in person and kicking off their collaboration.
Honeymoon
The collaboration between Li Ziqi and Weinian in the early days was a great success. Weinian invested heavily in running and managing Li’s account on Weibo, a Twitter-like microblogging platform. This investment paid off, as within a few months, Li’s subscribers on Weibo increased from 10,000 to 1 million. Public information shows that while Liu was investing on several influencers at the time, he spent the most on Li Ziqi. In September 2016, Li Ziqi and Weinian reached an agreement, with Li Ziqi responsible for content creation and Weinian responsible for attracting traffic and monetizing.
After Li Ziqi’s Weibo followers exceeded 10 million, Weinian launched Li Ziqi’s flagship store on Tmall, a premium version of Taobao, in August 2018. The main selections of the Li Ziqi brand were traditional foods with regional characteristics but no well-known brands, such as snail rice noodles, lotus root powder, and flower cakes.
According to the “2021 Most Growing Chinese New Consumer Brands”, the sales of Li Ziqi brand reached 1.6 billion yuan in 2020 (ranked 22nd), growing a whopping 300% compared to that in 2019.
The success helped establish Li as a leading voice in the digital media landscape and paved the way for her to expand her presence on other platforms. With this momentum, Li Ziqi’s Youtube account was opened in late 2017. On Youtube, the way Li Ziqi showcased traditional Chinese culture, cooking and lifestyle in her videos helped connect with a much wider audience across the world. Her channel grew rapidly, and she quickly became China’s most popular content creator on Youtube.
Dispute
As Li Ziqi and Weinian took advantage of Li’s rapidly-growing influence and following, a dispute began to arise over how the monetized money from her content and brand should be distributed. The dispute was rooted in the lack of a clear and structured system for Li Ziqi to monetize her intellectual property.
Despite receiving a total of 40 million RMB from Weinian, which included revenue from ads and sales of products, Li Ziqi felt that she was not receiving a fair share of the revenue generated from the monetization of her content and branded products. On the one hand, Li Ziqi co-owned “Ziqi Culture Communication” — let’s call it “Company A” — with Weinian. While Li controlled 49% of the share, this company was only focused on content generation. On the other hand, Weinian fully controlled the other company — Weinian Brand Management, or Company B — which brought in money from monetizing videos and selling Li Ziqi-branded products. Li had no share in Company B at all. In other words, while creating values and generating content through Company A, Li Ziqi had no direct control over the money being generated which went through Company B. Not surprisingly, Li Ziqi was not happy about it, to say the least. Stopping making and uploading videos is her way to fight back.
Weinian’s position on the dispute was that the company had incurred significant expenses and was operating at a loss. The company stated that it invested heavily in areas such as product selection, supply chain, promotion and marketing, offline channel laying, and team building, to continue its growth and development. Despite generating revenue in tens of millions in 2018, 300 million in 2019 and 1.2 billion in 2020, the company said it’s losing money due to the high cost of running the business. It claimed that it lost nearly 100 million yuan in the first half of 2021.
In August 2021, about one month after uploading her last video, an image surfaced on social media that showed Li Ziqi filling out legal documents in a police station. Along with the image was a post from Li Ziqi that read “Have asked lawyers to keep a record, this is so scary! Capital indeed has its good tricks!” This post was quickly deleted.
“Have asked lawyers to keep a record, this is so scary! Capital indeed has its good tricks!” — Li Ziqi
In October 2021, Li Ziqi ended up filing a lawsuit against Weinian.
Settlement
Fast-forward to December 2022, the dispute seemed to have a good ending. With the help of court mediation, Li Ziqi and Weinian finally reached a settlement. As part of the resolution, the company ownership was restructured, with Li Ziqi now holding 99% of the shares and Weinian holding 1%. It is widely expected that Li Ziqi would return with new content and maintain her relationship with Weinian moving forward.
Li Ziqi’s story serves as a cautionary tale of the complex and often murky relationships between social media creators and the MCN organizations that support them behind the scene. We’ve seen how the collaboration of the two parties helped turn Li Ziqi from a small online store owner into China’s most famous Youtuber. We’ve also seen how their dispute have led a popular influencer to step away from the online world. With the two parties settling their disagreements, we are excited to see what the future holds for Li Ziqi, and we can’t wait to see her continue to share her love for Chinese culture and tradition through her videos.
Update
In January 2023, a video surfaced on China’s social media with Li Ziqi sending her Chinese New Year wishes. This prompts much speculation that Li’s return might be soon.
