Transcript: Veteran China Ad Man Bryce Whitwam on China's Livestreaming e-Commerce Market

Thanks to Keya Zhou for the image! Listen to the transcript below by CadreScripts.com, which was checked and formatted by Lili Shoup!

Kaiser Kuo: Welcome to the Sinica Podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China. In this program, we’ll look at books, ideas, new research, intellectual currents, and cultural trends that can help us better understand what’s happening in China’s politics, foreign relations, economics, and society. Join me each week for in-depth conversations that shed more light and bring less heat to how we think and talk about China. I’m Kaiser Kuo, coming to you today from Syracuse University.

Sinica is supported this year by the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a national resource center for the study of East Asia. The Sinica Podcast will remain free for listeners, but if you work for an organization that believes in what I am doing with the podcast, please consider lending your support. You can get me at sinicapod@gmail.com. And listeners, please support my work at www.sinicapodcast.com. Become a subscriber and enjoy, in addition to the podcast, the complete transcript of the show, a weekly essay from me, or, you know, weekly-ish essay from me, and writings and podcasts from some of your favorite China-focused columnists and commentators — people like James Carter with his excellent This Week in China’s History column, Paul French with his Ultimate China Bookshelf, Andrew Methven with the Sinica Phrase of the Week, and, of course, Eric Olander and Cobus van Staden at the China Global South Project.

As we all know, there are roughly 1.4 billion people in China. About 1.1 billion of them were online as of the end of last year, 2023. Of those, about 75%, 816 million, give or take, watch livestreams, tuning in on their phones to vicariously enjoy someone’s vacation or experience their often numbingly quotidian lives, listen to their angry rants, their tales of woe, their cries for help, or, increasingly, their sales pitches. Almost 600 million people in China regularly watch e-commerce livestreams, according to CNNIC, the China Internet Network Information Center. And I know this via my good friend Ed Sander, who speaks often about livestreaming e-commerce and has taught me most of the little I know on the subject. So that’s, what, about 180% of the total U.S. population, not quite twice, but wow, Chinese people watching videos on their phones of other people selling them stuff. Perhaps you’re thinking this is like QVC on mega steroids, everyone tuned into the same big program, but that’s not at all what’s going on. Increasingly, these sellers are very specific and niche, they’re taking advantage of increasingly sophisticated algorithms to reach their intended customers. Of course, there is e-commerce livestreaming now in the U.S. and elsewhere with the growing popularity of the TikTok store, but so far, that is dwarfed by China. What does all this mean? 

Today on Sinica, I am joined by my old friend, Bryce Whitwam, who had a long and storied career in China, mainly in Shanghai as an ad executive for WPP and some of the agencies under that umbrella. While I know very, very little about this phenomenon, as I said, Bryce has really focused on it and has much to say. Currently a doctoral student at Syracuse, for part of his research, he conducted interviews with 25 Chinese e-commerce livestream shoppers across all sorts of different socioeconomic strata, and he has gleaned great insights into this trend. And so Bryce has generously offered to share those insights here on Sinica. Bryce, man, great to see you here. Thank you so much for making my trip here possible and for being so generous in hosting me.

Bryce Whitwam: It’s my pleasure, Kaiser. I’m a huge fan of the program. I’ve listened to the show since its inception. I love it, so it’s my honor to be on the show.

Kaiser: Thanks, man. You have your own podcast, right?

Bryce: That’s correct, Shanghai Zhan, it’s called. It’s a English language marketing and advertising podcast. We do it about once every two to three weeks.

Kaiser: Alright, so tune into that station, “Shanghai Station,” as it were. Yeah, check that out. Yeah, we were just talking about podcasting technology and it’s a lot of fun. So, Bryce, first off, you were living quite large and quite comfortably in China. I know your wife had this really popular chain of antique furniture stores. You were, yourself, making good money, well respected in your industry. You’re about my age, even a little bit older. I mean, we ain’t no spring chickens no more. What made you decide to leave Shanghai and come back to the States and pursue a doctorate? I mean, don’t those things like take 12 years? I mean, aren’t you going to be like-