A network anchor presents the goods to be sold during a live video stream in Baiyun District of Guangzhou City, south China's Guangdong Province, June 6, 2020. (Xinhua/Lu Ye)
BEIJING, June 27 (Xinhua) -- Kuaishou, a Chinese leading short-video platform, has announced that it will set up a headquarters for live streaming e-commerce business in Chengdu, capital of southwest China's Sichuan Province, as the company aims to further tap into the thriving sector.
The Beijing-based Kuaishou, a domestic rival of TikTok, will invest 3 billion yuan (about 425 million U.S. dollars) on the new headquarters that will be built in an innovation and technology park in the Chengdu high-tech zone, according to the agreement signed between the company and local authorities.
The move came amid China's live-streaming e-shopping boom as the COVID-19 epidemic confined Chinese consumers to indoors for months, which has grabbed the attention of traditional merchants, manufacturers and even local governments trying to foster new growth engines.
According to an action plan released by Sichuan Province earlier this year, the local government is aiming to make the province a regional center for live streaming e-commerce with annual sales volume reaching 10 billion yuan as of the end of 2022.
The number of live-streaming service users in China reached 560 million as of March, accounting for 62 percent of the country's total internet users. On Kuaishou alone, more than 100 million users are engaged in e-commerce business daily, data from the platform showed. ■
