HONG KONG – One of China’s biggest online influencers on Friday hit a political landmine promoting an ice cream product. In the process, he sparked a wave of curiosity about the government’s 1989 bloody crackdown on Tiananmen Square protesters among crowds of fans too young to remember it.
The discovery was the product of the marketing creativity of Li Jiaqi, an e-commerce live streamer known as the “Lipstick King,” who collides with the hair-triggered reflexes of China’s vigilante Internet censors.