Livestream Selling Strategies in China

Livestream selling has moved from a novelty into the default way hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers shop. For overseas brands, the opportunity is real: a market measured in trillions of yuan, a highly engaged buyer base, and a growing preference for brand-operated channels over anonymous influencers. But the same market now runs under a formal national regulatory framework, effective February 2026, that assigns specific legal duties to platforms, hosts, and the brands that hire them. Building a livestream selling strategy in China today means treating platform tactics and legal compliance as two halves of the same plan — not sequential steps. This guide walks through the market data, platform selection criteria, and the compliance and intellectual property framework that determine whether a livestream campaign becomes a growth channel or a liability.

How Big Is China’s Livestream Selling Market in 2026?

A Market Approaching Maturity, Not a Passing Trend

China’s livestream ecommerce sector generated more than RMB 5 trillion in gross merchandise value in 2025, close to one-third of total online retail sales.^[1] The user base reached an estimated 660 million people, supported by roughly 2.57 million registered livestream-related businesses.^[1] Between 2019 and 2024, the market grew more than twelvefold, and in 2024 alone it contributed an estimated 80% of all incremental ecommerce growth in China.^[1] Heading into 2026, growth has cooled to 15%-18% annually — still substantial, but a clear signal the channel has moved from explosive introduction into a mature, regulated stage.

Consumer adoption has not slowed. Penetration stands at 99.63%, with 76.19% shopping via livestream multiple times monthly.^[2] Price remains the top purchase driver (58.02%), but product quality and brand reputation (51.36%) and host credibility (31.77%) now shape decisions too — a shift from the early flash-sale era toward trust-based buying.

From Head Streamers to Brand-Owned Channels

The most consequential shift for overseas brands is the decline of the “super-streamer” model. In 2025, GMV from top-tier independent hosts fell to just 10.66%, while small and mid-tier hosts — including brand-operated channels — now account for 89.34%.^[2] Brand-owned “store broadcasting” passed 50% of total livestream GMV in 2025, overtaking influencer-led sales for the first time.^[2] This is a practical advantage: running a channel directly, rather than routing sales through a celebrity host, is now normal and often preferred by consumers, reducing cost and some third-party compliance risk. It does not eliminate legal exposure, though — brand-run channels still fall under the operator duties described below.

Choosing the Right Platform for Your Livestream Strategy

Douyin: Algorithm-Driven Reach at Scale

Douyin remains China’s largest livestream ecommerce platform by volume, built around algorithmic recommendation rather than a followed-creator feed.^[4] Brand-owned broadcasting has become a standard, always-on operation here, and Douyin has tightened host entry requirements while shifting its recommendation logic to balance content quality against conversion performance. It suits brands with content production capability and a willingness to broadcast near-daily rather than in occasional campaigns.

Kuaishou: Loyal Audiences and Social Trust

Kuaishou’s ecommerce business has posted strong year-on-year growth, driven by a social, follower-based audience rather than algorithmic discovery.^[4] Its buyers skew toward lower-tier cities and older demographics, with repeat purchases influenced by long-term host relationships. Household goods, value-tier products, and regional specialty items tend to see stronger organic reach here than on algorithm-first platforms.

Taobao Live: High-Spending, Brand-Native Shoppers

Taobao Live serves a higher-spending buyer base and functions as an extension of Alibaba’s ecommerce infrastructure rather than a standalone content platform. Brands already selling through Tmall or Taobao gain the most, since Taobao Live combines livestream selling with an established shelf-ecommerce presence, letting the same catalog, reviews, and store reputation support both channels.

Xiaohongshu (RED): Content-to-Conversion for Premium Categories

Xiaohongshu built its livestream model around “note-seeding to livestream conversion” — discovery through written and photo content, community discussion, then livestream purchase. This favors higher-consideration categories such as jewelry, beauty, and lifestyle goods, where buyers research before purchasing. Premium brands often see stronger price realization here than on volume-first platforms, despite a smaller audience.

The 2026 Regulatory Framework: Four Parties, Clear Responsibilities

Why the Measures Matter for Every Livestream Seller

On December 18, 2025, SAMR and the CAC jointly published Order No. 117, the Measures for the Supervision and Administration of Livestream Ecommerce, effective February 1, 2026.^[3] The Measures are widely regarded as the foundational law for the industry, replacing a patchwork of guidance with a single, full-chain accountability structure grounded in the existing E-Commerce Law, Consumer Protection Law, and Cybersecurity Law.^[3]

Measures for the Supervision and Administration of Livestream Ecommerce, Article 1 (Order No. 117, effective February 1, 2026): “To strengthen the supervision and administration of livestream e-commerce, protect the lawful rights and interests of consumers and business operators, and promote the healthy development of livestream e-commerce, these Measures are formulated in accordance with the E-Commerce Law of the People’s Republic of China, the Law on the Protection of Consumer Rights and Interests of the People’s Republic of China, the Cybersecurity Law of the People’s Republic of China, and other relevant laws.”

Platform Operators: Front-Line Gatekeepers

Platform operators carry the broadest set of duties under the Measures, spanning before, during, and after a livestream. These include verifying and registering the real identity of sellers and hosts, reporting information to regulators, training livestream marketing personnel, tiered management of room operators based on risk classification, handling violations, identifying and mitigating risk, and preserving transaction records for no less than three years from the date a transaction completes.^[3] Platforms must also maintain a blacklist system for repeat violators and are encouraged to share blacklist data across platforms — a provision aimed squarely at operators who get banned on one platform and simply reopen on another.

Livestream Room Operators and Marketing Personnel

Livestream room operators — the brand or seller running the broadcast — must disclose operator information, verify the identity of the actual business operator and the marketing personnel appearing on camera, manage interactive content in real time, conduct compliance review before broadcasting, and display clear, accurate pricing. False advertising, commercial disparagement of competitors, and the sale of unlawful goods or services are all expressly prohibited.^[3] Hosts appearing on camera face the same red lines, and where livestream content meets the legal definition of a commercial advertisement, obligations under the Advertising Law apply in addition to the Measures. Any use of AI-generated avatars or virtual hosts must be clearly labeled as such under the new rules — a first for Chinese ecommerce regulation.

MCN Agencies: Newly Codified Duties

For the first time, MCN agencies — the companies that recruit, train, and represent hosts — carry codified legal obligations rather than informal norms. The Measures require MCN agencies to build sound internal management systems for host recruitment and training, perform due diligence during commercial partnerships and product selection, and refrain from organizing fake transactions or reviews.^[3] For overseas brands, an MCN agreement that ignores these obligations leaves a gap in exactly the area regulators now scrutinize most closely. Brands evaluating an IP licensing or influencer agreement in China should confirm the MCN’s compliance systems before signing.

IP Protection Risks: Trademark Infringement and Counterfeiting in Livestreaming

The Huawei Livestream Case: A Landmark Warning

In September 2025, China’s Supreme People’s Court published a set of typical unfair-competition cases, including one now cited as the reference point for brand owners entering livestream selling.^[5] A Quzhou-based seller and its former legal representative decorated a livestream room to resemble a Huawei retail store, dressed hosts in branded clothing, displayed the Huawei trademark on the studio backdrop and overlays, and used a voice-assistant name similar to Huawei’s own — while selling phones and watches from unrelated manufacturers.^[5][6] The court found trademark infringement and unfair competition, applying threefold punitive damages and fully supporting Huawei’s RMB 1.1 million claim.^[5] The ruling was upheld on appeal.

Platform Obligations to Verify Brand Rights

Platforms must require sellers to provide genuine documentation — trademark certificates, franchise authorization, or brand sales authorization — before associating with a brand. Where a platform knows, or should know, that a room operator is infringing IP, it must remove the video, suspend the broadcast, disconnect sales links, or terminate the relationship; failing to act makes the platform jointly liable. This gives foreign trademark owners a practical lever: a documented complaint backed by a valid China registration can bring faster takedown action than pursuing the seller directly.

What This Means for Trademark Holders

Counterfeit and substandard goods remain the single most-cited consumer complaint in China’s livestream ecommerce sector, named by 49.27% of consumers surveyed as the most serious problem in the channel.^[8] For a foreign brand, this statistic cuts two ways: it signals genuine enforcement appetite from regulators and courts, but it also means unregistered or thinly protected brands are attractive, low-risk targets for opportunistic sellers riding on brand recognition built elsewhere. Registering trademarks in China before entering livestream channels — not after a dispute surfaces — remains the single most effective preventive step, since China operates on a first-to-file basis rather than first-to-use. Brands assessing their exposure can review YCIP’s guidance on ecommerce IP protection in China and on defending against trademark squatting before launching a livestream campaign.

Advertising Compliance: What Can and Cannot Be Said in a Livestream

Six Categories of Violations Regulators Are Targeting

Based on typical cases published by SAMR, unlawful conduct in livestream ecommerce clusters into six recurring categories: false advertising of various kinds (fabricated efficacy, data, reviews, or usage scenarios), sale of infringing or counterfeit goods, sale of substandard products, advertising violations (particularly in the medical and health-supplement space), price fraud, and inadequate platform-level enforcement of these rules. Brands running livestream campaigns should treat this list as a pre-broadcast compliance checklist rather than an abstract regulatory summary, since each category has produced enforcement actions with real financial penalties.

Absolute Terms and Unapproved Medical Claims Are Off Limits

China’s Advertising Law prohibits absolute or superlative terms such as “miracle cure,” “number one,” or “best,” and regulators have penalized livestream rooms for marketing ordinary products as cure-alls. Ordinary food products cannot claim medical effects such as weight loss; one enforcement case involved a host promoting a “family recipe” claiming to remove ten pounds in three days, when the product was actually a plain pastry. A newer rule bars influencers entirely from marketing pharmaceuticals, health supplements, special medical-use foods, and medical devices in livestream format. Where livestream content, or a repurposed short-video clip, functions as commercial advertising, it must meet Advertising Law obligations regardless of how casually it is framed.

Pricing Claims Carry Real Enforcement Risk

Fabricating original prices and inventing discounts are explicitly prohibited; one host was successfully sued after claiming a “lowest price across the entire internet,” which a court found to be fraud. Enforcement is not theoretical: SAMR fined Chengdu Kuaigou Technology — the ecommerce subsidiary behind a major short-video platform’s livestream shop — RMB 26.69 million for false advertising, poor disclosure, and failure to verify sellers’ IP rights, among other violations.^[7] Nationwide, regulators handled 36,000 internet-related cases in 2025, with fines and confiscated proceeds exceeding RMB 360 million.

Consumer Protection: Return Policies, After-Sales Service, and Liability

Where Consumers Get Stuck Today

Survey data identifies a specific bottleneck: 62.39% of consumers who tried to resolve a livestream dispute encountered unclear responsibility among host, seller, and platform, each pointing to the other.^[8] A further 43.21% struggled to preserve evidence, since a livestream’s sales links disappear once the broadcast ends. Product-description accuracy scored the lowest satisfaction of any dimension measured, with only 51.35% very satisfied that what they received matched what was shown on screen.^[8]

Advance Compensation as the New Standard

The 2026 Measures target this gap directly, requiring platforms to build a sound consumer-protection system and implement first-inquiry responsibility and advance-compensation principles.^[3] Under this model, when a consumer hits a quality problem, the responsible MCN agency or platform compensates them directly without waiting for the seller — even covering the loss in full if the seller becomes unreachable. Early results are promising: 83.63% of consumers approve of how advance compensation has worked in practice, and 61.42% now frequently see business licenses and host identities displayed in livestream rooms.^[8]

The Legal Basis Spans Multiple Statutes

Livestream selling disputes typically draw on a stack of underlying statutes rather than a single law: the E-Commerce Law, the Consumer Protection Law, the Advertising Law, the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, the Product Quality Law, the Food Safety Law, the Price Law, the Trademark Law, and the Patent Law all potentially apply depending on the facts of a case.

Implementing Regulations of the Consumer Protection Law, Article 14: “Where a business operator provides goods or services through internet livestreaming or similar methods, it shall lawfully perform its consumer-protection obligations; where the livestream content constitutes a commercial advertisement, it shall perform the corresponding obligations under the Advertising Law.”

A single livestream broadcast can trigger obligations under several statutes at once — a claim about a product’s origin or effect is simultaneously an Advertising Law, Consumer Protection Law, and potentially Trademark Law question. Brands with existing China IP portfolios should confirm livestream campaigns are reviewed against the same standards applied to broader IP compliance obligations for foreign companies in China.

Contract Essentials for Brands Engaging Influencers and MCNs

IP Ownership and Content Clauses

Any agreement with a host or MCN agency should clearly assign ownership of everything produced — the recording, short-video clips, screenshots, and scripted talking points. It should also bar the host from promoting any product that infringes third-party IP, and require the MCN to confirm it has performed due diligence on products selected for the room.

Advertising Compliance Responsibility

Scripts should require brand pre-approval before broadcast, with explicit language prohibiting false advertising, exaggerated claims, and absolute terms of the kind already penalized. The contract should allocate responsibility clearly: if a host’s off-script claim triggers a regulatory penalty or consumer claim, the agreement should state in advance who bears that cost.

Data Integrity and After-Sales Clauses

Contracts should prohibit organizing fake transactions or reviews, and require that sales data provided to the brand is accurate. On after-sales, specify the return policy, name the responsible party, and — drawing on the advance-compensation model — set a response-time standard and compensation threshold. Confirm the MCN has the internal management systems the Measures require, and obtain the host’s verified identity before the relationship begins. See YCIP’s guide to IP licensing agreement best practices in China for structuring these terms.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the new livestream ecommerce regulation in China in 2026?

Order No. 117, effective February 1, 2026, regulates platform operators, room operators, hosts, and MCN agencies, with three-year record retention and a platform blacklist system.^[3]

How big is China’s livestream selling market in 2025-2026?

GMV exceeded RMB 5 trillion in 2025, near one-third of online retail, with about 660 million users, now growing at a slower 15%-18% annual pace.^[1]

What are the legal risks for brands in livestream ecommerce?

Trademark and unfair-competition exposure, advertising-law violations, product-quality liability, and data-integrity risk from fake transactions or reviews are the four main categories.^[5]

Who is liable when a product sold via livestream is defective or fake?

The room operator bears direct responsibility for self-broadcast sales; MCN agencies share responsibility when promoting third-party goods; platforms face joint liability if they knew of infringement and failed to act.^[3]

What are the biggest consumer complaints about livestream shopping?

Counterfeit or substandard goods (49.27%), non-transparent pricing (39.18%), and exaggerated claims (35.80%) top the list, with 62.39% citing unclear liability as their main obstacle to redress.^[8]

Conclusion: Build Your Livestream Strategy on a Compliant Foundation

Livestream selling in China has matured from a fast-growing experiment into a regulated, trust-driven sales channel worth trillions of yuan — and the brands winning in it are the ones treating platform strategy and legal compliance as a single plan rather than two separate workstreams. The 2026 Measures, the Huawei trademark case, and the record-setting penalties issued against major platform operators all point in the same direction: regulators and courts are actively enforcing against unregistered brand association, exaggerated claims, and unclear contractual responsibility, and consumers themselves are increasingly aware of which brands get this right.

Before your next livestream campaign goes live, confirm three things: your trademarks are registered and enforceable in China, your influencer and MCN contracts assign IP ownership and compliance responsibility in writing, and your advertising claims have been reviewed against current Advertising Law standards. YCIP’s trademark and copyright services and consultation and litigation support team works with overseas brands at every stage of this process, from initial trademark clearance through contract review and enforcement action against infringing livestream sellers. Contact YCIP to have your livestream selling strategy reviewed before you launch, or get started with a trademark application quote if brand protection is your first step.

References

1. [1] “直播电商贡献电子商务80%增量” (“Livestream Ecommerce Contributes 80% of Ecommerce Growth”), Xinhua, https://www.news.cn/tech/20260302/dfd15b1514574b3e889cb20803ebaa6b/c.html. Source Role: primary news report citing the SAMR Development Research Center / CASS white paper. Support Status: supports. Relevance: source of 2025 GMV, user base, and business registration figures.
2. [2] “《2025直播电商行业发展白皮书》发布” (“2025 Livestream Ecommerce Industry Development White Paper Released”), China Daily (Chinese edition), https://caijing.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202603/17/WS69b8f73ca310942cc49a3934.html. Source Role: news coverage of the official industry white paper. Support Status: supports. Relevance: source of brand store-broadcast share, top-streamer GMV decline, and consumer penetration figures.
3. [3] “直播电商监督管理办法” (Measures for the Supervision and Administration of Livestream Ecommerce, Order No. 117), State Administration for Market Regulation, https://www.samr.gov.cn/zw/zfxxgk/fdzdgknr/fgs/art/2026/art_ce66ea61fcec4583b5dbd677f470088b.html. Source Role: primary legal source, official regulator publication. Support Status: supports. Relevance: full text of the regulation cited throughout this article, including Article 1 and party-specific duties.
4. [4] “年带货GMV近7万亿《2025直播电商市场数据报告》” (“2025 Livestream Ecommerce Market Data Report”), 100EC/Sohu, https://m.sohu.com/a/1019861453_120491808. Source Role: industry data report. Support Status: partial. Relevance: platform-level GMV estimates for Douyin, Taobao Live, and other platforms; figures are third-party estimates rather than platform-disclosed data.
5. [5] “直播间几百元的’华为’手机热销，最高法发布案例揭穿套路” (“Discounted ‘Huawei’ Phones Sell Briskly in Livestream Rooms; Supreme People’s Court Case Exposes the Scheme”), Tencent News, https://news.qq.com/rain/a/20250908A07OA200. Source Role: news report on a Supreme People’s Court typical case. Support Status: supports. Relevance: primary factual account of the Huawei livestream trademark infringement case.
6. [6] “华为直播案：商标侵权与不正当竞争的并行适用” (“The Huawei Livestream Case: Concurrent Application of Trademark Infringement and Unfair Competition”), Lexology, https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=ae089317-734a-4b96-9625-a67f2ff33253. Source Role: legal commentary. Support Status: supports. Relevance: confirms damages amount and legal reasoning in the Huawei case.
7. [7] “官方通报快手旗下成都快购违法案：罚没款2669.29万元” (“Official Notice: Kuaishou’s Chengdu Kuaigou Violation Case, RMB 26.69 Million in Fines and Confiscated Proceeds”), China News Service, https://www.chinanews.com.cn/cj/2026/01-30/10562635.shtml. Source Role: state media report on an official SAMR enforcement action. Support Status: supports. Relevance: source of the penalty amount and violation categories cited in the advertising compliance section.
8. [8] “《直播电商消费者满意度调查报告（2026）》发布，责任不清成维权最大障碍” (“2026 Livestream Ecommerce Consumer Satisfaction Survey Report Released: Unclear Liability Is the Biggest Obstacle to Redress”), Sina Finance, https://finance.sina.com.cn/stock/t/2026-03-14/doc-inhqxryn0456255.shtml. Source Role: news coverage of an independent consumer survey report. Support Status: supports. Relevance: source of all consumer complaint, satisfaction, and liability-confusion statistics cited in this article.

Disclaimer: This article is provided for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Please consult a qualified attorney for guidance on your specific situation.