Many government officials and public figures in China have begun promoting products via live streaming recently.

The mayor (left) of Henan Mongolian Autonomous County in Qinghai province sells local products via live streaming. (Photo/People’s Daily)

As an emerging form of Internet-based consumption, this innovative way of promoting products has become increasingly popular amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

On April 15, the heads of 30 counties in central China’s virus-hit Hubei province promoted local products on live streaming platforms.

Li Lei, the young deputy mayor of Haiyang, east China’s Shandong province, who has a doctor’s degree, recently drew widespread attention online as a result of the short videos he posted on a video sharing platform to promote sales of local agricultural products.

Some of the videos Li posted on the platform have been played more than 2 million times.

Meanwhile, public figures across the country have been continuously setting new sales records during their live stream promotions.

With this new method continuing to gain popularity, more and more consumers have been flocking to live streaming platforms to buy products, and many enterprises and entrepreneurs have also tapped into this new hotspot for consumption and business opportunity.

The variety of the products being promoted via live streaming has constantly expanded, and can include anything from from houses to cars and even airplanes.

In a sense, China has long been prepared to promote goods via live streaming. As the related business models had already been well developed, it was natural for sales promotion via live streaming to become so popular, especially with people having to stay at home due to the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

Novel forms of consumption, including online group buying and online education, that have sprung up during the prevention and control of COVID-19 have made up for plummeting offline consumption, and to some extent, expanded domestic demand and boosted consumption.

Against the backdrop of the pandemic that is threatening the entire world, efforts to promote new forms of online consumption and integration of online and offline consumption are essential to revitalizing economic drivers.

With trade growth severely impacted around the world as a result of the pandemic, it’s crucial that China learns to cope with changes in the external environment and stabilizes economic growth by boosting domestic demand.

Novel online consumption methods, with live-streaming promotion being a typical example, play an important role in achieving this.

By seizing the opportunities offered by digital, network and smart technologies, China can not only boost consumption through methods such as sales promotion via live streaming, but also turn crisis into opportunity and realize economic transformation and upgrading.