Live Streaming Injects New Vitality into Community Governance

In Lieshita Community, Pukou District, Nanjing City, the anchors of the live streaming base in the “Hong Business Zone” are falling over each other in their eagerness to promote Xinjiang delicacies from the “Xinjiang Fragrant Nang and Baked Bun Shop” on TikTok, sending the shop propelled into Internet fame.

“Now I can sell 100 more pieces of nang bread each day, that means 400 yuan more than usual. Unexpectedly I’ve basically become an influencer on social media,” Urayim Kari, the store owner, said with excitement.

Urayim Kari and his wife came from Kashgar, Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. At first they ran a mobile snack stall in Lieshita Community for ten years. To help the migrant couple to develop their own business, the community gave them support to open a snack shop in 2019. Now live streaming makes their business booming.

Live streaming is a new marketing strategy Lieshita Community advocates in recent years for the improvement in grassroots governance. The community is located in the busiest market streets of Jiangpu Old Town. There are a total of 3,200 households in the area, and more than 1,200 of them are shop owners with about 3,000 employees. Most of the buildings have shops on the first floor and living space on the above floors. So the community has to serve both the shops and residents.

E-commerce and digital technology are widely used in live streaming marketing in Pukou District. Lieshita Community launched the “Hong Business Zone” live streaming base and a non-profit entrepreneurship service center together with e-commerce company Liuxiaohu, offering various forms of support, including training, funding, and equipment for e-commerce live streamers.

There are now more than 200 stores at the base, which has become a service platform for small businesses and grassroots governance. Live streaming plays the role of a bridge linking the community with local businesses and residents. As business booms, residents get more income while they have more trust in the community service, and in turn the community administrators now find it easier to do their work.

“We wish to help people in the community better access business and job opportunities through non-profit public training programs,” said Song Yang, one of the base’s founders.

A live stream host helps a retailer sell goods via live stream at a store in Lieshita Community, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, November 30, 2022. PUKOU DISTRICT MULTIMEDIA CENTER / PHOTO BY WANG JUN

The base launched a live streamer incubation plan for women with babies to take care of, which has so far benefited more than 70 people in the community. Zhang Geqin is one of them; she has participated in five training sessions. After her child entered junior high school, she had more time of her own, so she wanted to be re-employed. With the help of the trainers at the live streaming base, Zhang started from scratch to learn live streaming and became very skillful now.

Wu Zhiwei graduated from the Nanjing University of Finance and Economics a year ago, and November 30, 2022 was a big day for her. She and her friends opened a cross-border store on TikTok. A few dozen pieces of jewelry were sold immediately once they were posted. Without the base’s support, she might not have been able to start her business. The base gave her whole-process support from positioning herself and selecting categories of goods, to building channels and making connections. This example has encouraged many young people to come to the community to start their own businesses.

The base also focuses on supporting villagers aside from mothers and college graduates. A live streaming studio was built to provide a platform for skilled anchors and shop owners to cooperate with agricultural communities and innovation parks, and better market local specialties. To help Pukou agricultural products enter the national market, the base created a new mode of marketing local products: “Internet influencers + customer’s visits + specialty products.” So far, agricultural products worth more than three million yuan have been sold, and over ten training classes for live steaming have been opened.

“Since the 20th CPC National Congress in 2022, we have introduced the new policies through our broadcasting, while maintaining our relatable, down-to-earth style in live streaming. People were very concerned about the policies relating to livelihood in the report to the 20th CPC National Congress, so we made much interpretation about the policies,” said Yu Xinyi, a live streamer on the rise. She not only sells products, but also interprets policies for the local people.

The live streaming base of the “Hong Business Zone” in Lieshita Community provides services for shops in the zone, and at the same time helps people better understand the policies offered in the report to the 20th CPC National Congress.