Fake Rich of China: The Secret Lives and Lies of ‘Shanghai Socialites' | China Economy | by 700ETH | Jun, 2023...
how do you become a part of shanghai's super rich social class some people think joining a wechat group is the way to go there is a group of female socialites in china who have an extremely luxurious life or at least they appear to they wear different designer clothes every day live in a variety of five-star hotels and enjoy luxurious afternoon tea a blogger recently exposed their secrets after covertly joining this mysterious group an article entitled i lurked in shanghai socialites group for half a month and
became a socialite observer was published on october 12th and immediately went viral on chinese social media chinese blogger li zhong er the author documented his observations while undercover in a community of socialites in shanghai he was invited to join a group called shanghai socialite and after paying 75 us as a membership fee and submitting proof of his assets of 14 891 us dollars he was admitted what he discovered was that instead of being an actual group for rich girls talking about their latest luxury product
the group is actually all about finding ways to simply appear rich part of being part of the group is sharing resources and splitting the cost of renting luxury products and even sharing intimate items like secondhand gucci pantyhose in one example group members would split the price of a two-person room at the bulgari hotel in shanghai with up to 40 people after lianger posted his article online people linked the shanghai socialite group with another issue an issue referred to as the training camp sega here's a quick recap in july of this
year not long after taiwanese singer wilbur pan announced his marriage to chinese air stewardess luna schwann chinese billionaire wang shikhan shared a cryptic post revealing that hong kong actor aaron kwok and wilbur pond's marriages were all linked by a woman named amy the two celebrities wives had both joined a pickup artist training camp which teaches women how to marry celebrities they became famous internet celebrities during their camps day where they were trained to meet with famous husbands the training camp trains its trainees to
become a superstar wife with a four-step process step one involves plastic surgery which changes the girls faces into an influencer face that everyone loves this is the reason women who have married celebrities over the past few years look so similar to one another step two is to travel to a designated location as a group to take influencer photos under the guidance of their mentor the girls will pose for pictures in the same outfit same hotel room and even in the same staged room the girls get to meet the celebrities by
disguising themselves as though they come from rich families step three is to follow their mentors to nightclubs or parties in order to gain access to private rooms frequented by celebrities mentors will share their resources to get the students into these exclusive places that will allow the girls a chance to showcase the skills they learn during the training once the student exchanges contact information with the target the mentor will teach her how to reply in a way to hook the target when the time is right the mentor will
ask the girl to let the celebrities go public with their relationship finally cinderella snakes a famous husband by fooling her husband and the people around him china has the largest internet celebrity population in the world as of june 2019 the number of chinese social media influencers had reached 433 million nearly 50.
7 percent of all internet users but why is the internet celebrity industry so popular in china china is labeled 2016 as the webcasting era there are hundreds of live streaming platforms in china including red tick tock and quay where people can follow every move of their favorite internet celebrity anytime anywhere and even become an internet celebrity themselves according to a shinway report chinese generation z prefers jobs with a flexible working system and holidays compared to traditional workplaces which have rigid systems with limited wages
internet celebrity has a relatively elastic workload easy money and millions of adoring fans which makes it a dream job for young people moreover china is a big country that has 1.4 billion people in a serious disparity between the rich and the poor although international organizations generally believe that china's jini coefficient is about 0.
47 according to a 2014 report by the china social science research center of beijing university china's ginny coefficient has reached 0.73 in 2012 with 30 percent of the country's wealth being held by one percent of the households chinese premier lee kurchong said at the national people's congress and the chinese people's political consultative conference in may of this year that china's annual per capita income is four thousand four hundred and sixty eight dollars while 600 million people are in us 149 per month the data implies
that the government the powerful and the rich live in luxury while the grassroots live in dire straits with the rise of social media people discovered a new lucrative job being an internet celebrity which does not require any education or earn skill by selling their online influence to a brand internet celebrities can make a quick buck and change their social level from grassroots to middle class hence there are so many chinese who want to become an internet celebrity zhang da-yi china's number one internet
influencer is one of the examples of a grassroots who turned her fortune by becoming an internet celebrity she came from a grassroots family but today she has more than 10 million followers and her online store has nearly 200 million total monthly sales however there is evidence that xiangdi is the mistress of the ceo of tmall and that she used a pregnancy to sabotage the happiness of his family chinese singer feng timo who also came from a grassroots family began to gain fame in 2014 after singing live on an online platform
in 2018 feng timo gained 17.4 million followers and her income reached 15 million however netizens determined that she had a secret affair with a man to gain 1.6 million as a reward in the fiercely competitive online market very few people can stand out from the crowd most of the internet celebrities are concentrated in the middle or bottom tier of the influencer market in order to compete with other online influencers and gain more money some internet celebrities will push the trend to the extreme take the mukbanger as an example mukbang
is the practice of live streaming the process of eating to meet an audience member's need for companionship and to satisfy the desire for food by viewing it originated in korea as a new food culture practice however when it passes to china it forms a totally different situation Chinese mukbangers will show off the ability to eat and often overeating to attract fans in order to get advertising investment in 2015 the mukbang hashtag shot to the top of social media search lists and more and more mukbangers gained
millions from live streaming for example the mukbanger Lihongzi has nearly 40 million fans on TikTok and earns 90 000 per advertisement another mukbanger myers has over 2.5 million viewers and gains 50 000 for each twenty second advertisement however many Mukbanger ended up with severe anorexia and even death due to excessive protein intake in July this year a thirty-year-old male mukbanger in Shenyang suddenly collapsed and died during a live broadcast according to reports the male mukbanger had started his mukbang for six months
and was often overeating he died of a cerebral hemorrhage after the intake of copious amounts of high calorie and fatty food in a short period of time many chinese sociologists have said that chinese internet celebrities often promote distorted values such as money worship and utilitarianism more and more young people are looking for a way to get rich quickly such as being an internet celebrity instead of working hard when young people aspire to get rich quickly how far can the country go
