(Bloomberg) -- Sitting in front of a webcam, a young Chinese woman shows off a can of dried whitebait as her viewers feverishly press the “like” button.
The influencer is selling farm goods on behalf of Poyang County in China's southern Jiangxi province, a region that's recently been battered by severe floods. She's part of a growing trend of government officials turning to e-commerce and social-media apps like Taobao and Douyin to boost sales of local produce, and in this case, provide emergency funds.
In the first quarter alone, over 100 mayors turned to live online broadcasts to revitalize sales of local produce, state media reported. On e-commerce platform Pinduoduo, nearly 50 live videos were organized by government officials from February to April, with more than 300,000 tons of farm goods sold that would otherwise be stockpiled, the report said.
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For Poyang County, officials are betting on livestreaming to help raise money to buy flood-prevention materials. More than 6.8 million people and 620,000 hectares of farmland have been impacted by flooding in Jiangxi, and economic losses are over 16.3 billion yuan, the provincial government said in a statement on Weibo on Friday.
But the trend hasn't come without its critics. Xinhua, the country's official news agency, said some government bureaucrats treat it as a publicity stunt and there have been cases of fake orders that were later canceled.
By the end of the almost 4-hour long livestream, the influencer for Poyang County had introduced more than two dozen products, from rapeseed oil, honey, chrysanthemum tea to homemade pepper sauces. The video amassed almost 400,000 views and 3 million likes.
“I can smell the scent from here,” the young woman said, commenting on a large chunk of smoked pork. “160 yuan for a gift box, and plus it smells really nice.”
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