NetEase’s CEO Ding Lei (center) livestreams on Thursday. Photo: GT

A total of 10 executives from tech firms including Baidu, Huawei, Lenovo and iFlytek, showed up in livestreaming on e-commerce platform JD.com on Thursday night to boost sales of their latest products.

CEO livestreaming as a sales promotion has become a new trend in China amid the economic recovery and the largest mid-year 618 online shopping festival.

Zhang Hua, vice president of Lenovo Group, kicked off the livestream by launching a new Lenovo laptop with facial recognition technology and offering a discount of 400 yuan ($56.6). 

President of Huawei China Lu Yong promoted intelligent office equipment during the live show. Earlier on Thursday, Huawei launched another CEO-level livestream on its own online shopping platform. The head of Huawei Honor promoted Honor series products, including smartphones and smart watches.

Huawei's CEO livestream sales started on May 20 when He Gang, president of Huawei's mobile phone division, received 811,300 views, four times that of other livestreams by Huawei. 

Ding Lei, CEO of NetEase, one of the first internet companies in China, also launched his first livestreaming sales promotion on short video platform Kuaishou on Thursday. The NASDAQ-listed firm was officially listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange on the same day. NetEase's stock price opened at HK$133 and has surged by 8 percent from its offer price, with 171 million new shares sold globally.

Another e-commerce giant, Alibaba's Tmall, announced it would have more than 600 CEOs livestreaming on the platform to promote sales. Dong Mingzhu, chairwoman of Chinese home appliance giant Gree joined the Tmall livestream on the first day of the 618 shopping festival on June 1.

Tmall also had diplomats from 16 countries to boost sales on Tuesday, attracting 9 million people, following the first diplomat livestream on Pinduodou, another online shopping platform with nearly 600 million users in China.

Global Times