Live-streaming as a sales and marketing tool has been on the rise in many global markets, but Asia and undoubtedly China are leading the pack when it comes to the influence of these live-streamers on consumers.
The increasing use of this format to sell food products, especially on near-omnipresent platforms in the country such as Douyin (TikTok) and Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book), has led the Chinese government to implement new regulations specifically targeting live-streamers in the country, becoming the first government in the world to do so.
“The aim of these new regulations is to not only strengthen supervision and management of food live-streaming e-commerce activities, but also urge these live-streaming operators to fulfil their primary responsibility in ensuring the food safety of the products they are selling,” China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) stated via a formal statement.
“These regulations will apply [not only to the live-streamer], but also operators of the relevant e-commerce platforms, operators of the live-streaming rooms used, marketers and market service agencies involved in the live-streaming activities.”
No more hiding behind the scenes
This means that not only the person seen online (usually a celebrity or an employee of the e-commerce store) will be held responsible, so the businesses behind the scenes will also need to proactively ensure that food safety regulations are complied with as the onus has now been placed on them as well.
Many specific requirements have been put in place under these new regulations. For instance, all platform operators (such as Douyin) are now required to create formal platform service agreements, transaction rules and food safety management systems to ensure that the food products being sold on their sites are compliant with regulations.
“This would include things such as processes to review and register their live-streaming room operators, systems for food safety risk control and how any food safety violations would be handled, as well as norms for food live-streaming e-commerce activities such as commercial promotion and consumer rights protection,” the ministry added.
“Additionally, platform operators will now be required to mandate all live-streaming room operators applying to use their platform for food live-streaming activities to provide real information such as name, ID card number, actual business address, contact information, and administrative licenses, [with] verifications and updates to be reviewed every six months.”
Given the immense quantity and variety of food products with the potential of being sold via live-streams, SAMR has also instructed all platform operators to create a ‘Food Safety Risk Control List’ for the specific products that are being sold via live-stream on their platforms, specifying the risk control management system in place for each product.
As for the live-streamers and relevant businesses behind them, the new regulations have specifically highlighted a need to only showcase accurate and truthful information in the live-streams, going to far as to prevent the use of technology such as filters to impact consumer perception.
“No technical means, equipment or facilities can be used to alter the true colour or sensory characteristics of the food, thereby misleading consumers’ sensory perception of the product,” SAMR stated.
“The food products must not be explicitly or implicitly claimed to have disease prevention or treatment functions, and no medical terminology should be used. Other than [products certified as] health food products, no other foods can be claimed to have health functions.”
The new regulations will officially be enforced on March 20 2026, and more information can be found here. [Link is in Chinese]
World-first impact
China is the first country to formally regulate food live-streaming as a distinct category, with most other countries usually treating this as a part of general e-commerce sales.
The EU for instance has its General Food Law which sets food safety regulations for all food products, including those sold online, but does not single out live-streaming for governance, treating it as just another sales channel.
The United States uses the FDA Food Code and other food safety regulations across federal, state and local levels, but also does not specifically govern live-streaming as a category.
Of course, this is largely driven by the fact that live-streaming is extremely prevalent in China compared to these other markets. It accounts for over 23% of the country’s online retail sales, and is estimated to be worth over CNY5tn (US$675bn), according to Chinese insights agency Hi-Com.
